System for providing information via context searching of printed substrate

ABSTRACT

A method of providing information to a user via a printed substrate, said substrate comprising user information and coded data indicative of a region identity associated with the substrate and of a plurality of locations on the substrate, said method comprising the steps of: receiving, in a computer system, interaction data indicative of the region identity and at least one position of a sensing device relative to the substrate, the sensing device generating the interaction data, when operatively positioned or moved relative to the substrate, by reading at least some of the coded data; identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description corresponding to the printed substrate using the region identity; generating a query expression comprising one or more search terms, at least one of said search terms being identified using the page description and the at least one position of the sensing device; forming a request using the query expression; and sending the request, or a results resource including search results obtained using the request, to the user.

CROSS REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This present application claims the benefit of 60/829,866 filed 17 Oct.2006 and a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/520,170filed on Sep. 13, 2006, which is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S.application Ser. No. 09/575,197 filed on May 23, 2000, all of which isnow incorporated by reference.

FIELD OF INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to computing systems and, moreparticularly, to a method and system for enabling selection and use ofobjects in a computer system. It has been developed primarily to enableusers to receive useful information from a paper-based user interface.

COPENDING

The following applications have been filed by the Applicant with thepresent application:

11/672,522 11/672,950 11/672,947 11/672,891 11/672,533

The disclosures of these co-pending applications are incorporated hereinby reference. The above applications have been identified by theirfiling docket number, which will be substituted with the correspondingapplication number, once assigned.

CROSS REFERENCES

The following patents or patent applications filed by the applicant orassignee of the present invention are hereby incorporated bycross-reference.

6,405,055 6,628,430 7,136,186 7,286,260 7,145,689 7,130,075 7,081,9747,177,055 7,209,257 7,161,715 7,154,632 7,158,258 7,148,993 7,075,6847,564,580 11/650,545 7,241,005 7,108,437 6,915,140 6,999,206 7,136,1987,092,130 6,750,901 6,476,863 6,788,336 7,249,108 6,566,858 6,331,9466,246,970 6,442,525 7,346,586 7,685,423 6,374,354 7,246,098 6,816,9686,757,832 6,334,190 6,745,331 7,249,109 7,197,642 7,093,139 7,509,2927,685,424 7,743,262 7,210,038 7,401,223 7,702,926 7,716,098 7,170,6526,967,750 6,995,876 7,099,051 7,453,586 7,193,734 11/209,711 7,468,8107,095,533 6,914,686 7,161,709 7,099,033 7,364,256 7,258,417 7,293,8537,328,968 7,270,395 7,461,916 7,510,264 7,334,864 7,255,419 7,284,8197,229,148 7,258,416 7,273,263 7,270,393 6,984,017 7,347,526 7,357,4777,465,015 7,364,255 7,357,476 11/003,614 7,284,820 7,341,328 7,246,8757,322,669 7,445,311 7,452,052 7,455,383 7,448,724 7,441,864 7,637,5887,648,222 7,669,958 7,607,755 7,699,433 7,658,463 11/518,238 11/518,2807,663,784 11/518,243 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BACKGROUND

The Applicant has previously described a method of enabling users toaccess information from a computer system via a printed substrate e.g.paper. The substrate has coded data printed thereon, which is read by anoptical sensing device when the user interacts with the substrate usingthe sensing device. A computer receives interaction data from thesensing device and uses this data to determine what action is beingrequested by the user. For example, a user may select a printedhyperlink using a sensing device and retrieve a corresponding webpagevia a display device or printer.

It would be desirable to enhance the functionality of theabove-described system. Enhanced functionality would encourage greateruse of the system and, hence, generate increased revenue streams forsystem providers.

More particularly, it would be desirable to provide users with usefulinformation from every interaction with the substrate, irrespective ofwhether the user has interacted with a specific interactive element(e.g. hyperlink) on the substrate.

It would further be desirable to provide users with greater control overwhat type of information they receive when interacting with a printedsubstrate.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

In a first aspect the present invention provides a method of providinginformation to a user via a printed substrate, said substrate comprisinguser information and coded data indicative of a region identityassociated with the substrate and of a plurality of locations on thesubstrate, said method comprising the steps of:

-   -   receiving, in a computer system, interaction data indicative of        the region identity and at least one position of a sensing        device relative to the substrate, the sensing device generating        the interaction data, when operatively positioned or moved        relative to the substrate, by reading at least some of the coded        data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity;    -   generating a query expression comprising one or more search        terms, at least one of said search terms being identified using        the page description and the at least one position of the        sensing device;    -   forming a request using the query expression; and    -   sending the request, or a results resource including search        results obtained using the request, to the user.

Optionally, the request is a request URI derived from the queryexpression.

Optionally, the request URI is sent to the user's web terminal, therebyenabling the user's web terminal to retrieve a corresponding resourcevia the internet.

Optionally, the at least one search term is associated, in the pagedescription, with a zone of the substrate containing the position of thesensing device.

Optionally, the at least one search term is a keyword extracted fromtext in the zone.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms identifies a concept, aperson, an organization, a place, a product, a publication, a weathercondition, a geographic location, a date, a time of day, a day of theweek, a current user location, a user home location, a user demographicindicator, a user preference, a search history, a click-through history,a user interest or a user language.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms is derived from a resourcedescription, a subject description, a user description or an environmentdescription.

Optionally, the query expression is generated by combining the searchterms using operators selected from the group comprising: Booleanoperators, proximity constraint operators and occurrence constraintoperators.

Optionally, the at least one search term is a primary search term and atleast one of the other search terms of the query expression is a contextsearch term, said context search term being derived from a word, phrase,line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document or regioncontaining the zone.

Optionally, said context search term is contained in or associated witha word, phrase, line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document orregion containing the zone.

Optionally, the search results all contain the primary search term, andare ranked according to whether they contain the context search term.

Optionally, said keyword comprises a plurality associated words, saidplurality of associated words being identified from at least one word inthe zone.

Optionally, the page description comprises a lexicon for identifyingsaid plurality of associated words from the at least one word and atleast one adjacent word.

Optionally, the at least one primary search term is a keyword and the atleast one context search term is derived by at least partiallydetermining a meaning of said keyword.

Optionally, the meaning is at least partially determined using a methodselected from the group comprising: identifying a part of speech forsaid keyword; identifying a supersense of said keyword; and identifyinga concept corresponding to said keyword in an ontology.

Optionally, the results resource is derived, at least partially, fromthe request using at least one of: a concordance; a semanticconcordance; a database of search terms associated with advertisements;and a search engine.

Optionally, the search engine is selected using said page description.

Optionally, the substrate is selected from the group comprising: aprinted document, a printed form, a page of a printed publication, apackage for a product item, a label for a product item and a surface ofa product item.

Optionally, the resource is a webpage.

In a further aspect there is provided a computer system for providinginformation to a user via a printed substrate, said substrate comprisinguser information and coded data indicative of a region identityassociated with the substrate and of a plurality of locations on thesubstrate, said computer system being configured for:

-   -   receiving, in a computer system, interaction data indicative of        the region identity and at least one position of a sensing        device relative to the substrate, the sensing device generating        the interaction data, when operatively positioned or moved        relative to the substrate, by reading at least some of the coded        data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity;    -   generating a query expression comprising one or more search        terms, at least one of said search terms being identified using        the page description and the at least one position of the        sensing device;    -   forming a request using the query expression; and    -   sending the request, or a results resource including search        results obtained using the request, to the user.

In a further aspect there is provided a method of providing informationto a user via a printed substrate, said substrate comprising userinformation and coded data indicative of a region identity associatedwith the substrate and of at least one search term, said at least onesearch term being associated with a respective part of the userinformation, said method comprising the steps of:

-   -   receiving, in a computer system, interaction data indicative of        said region identity and of at least one search term, the        sensing device generating the interaction data, when operatively        positioned relative to the substrate, by reading at least some        of the coded data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity;    -   generating a query expression comprising one or more search        terms, at least one of said search terms being a search term        identified from the interaction data;    -   forming a request using the query expression; and    -   sending the request, or a results resource including search        results obtained using the request, to the user.

In a second aspect the present invention provides a method of providinginformation to a user via a printed substrate, said substrate comprisinguser information and coded data, said coded data being indicative of aregion identity associated with the substrate and of a plurality oflocations on the substrate, said method comprising the steps of:

-   -   receiving, in a computer system, interaction data indicative of        the region identity and at least one position of a sensing        device relative to the substrate, the sensing device generating        the interaction data, when operatively positioned or moved        relative to the substrate, by reading at least some of the coded        data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity;    -   determining, using the page description and the position of the        sensing device, whether the sensing device is positioned within        a zone of a hyperlink on the substrate; and    -   (i) if the sensing device is positioned within a zone of a        hyperlink:        -   sending a hyperlink URI or a hyperlinked resource            corresponding to the hyperlink to the user;            or    -   (ii) if the sensing device is positioned outside a zone of a        hyperlink:        -   generating a query expression comprising one or more search            terms, at least one of said search terms being identified            using the page description and the at least one position of            the sensing device;        -   forming a request using the query expression; and        -   sending the request, or a results resource including search            results obtained using the request, to the user.

Optionally, the request is a request URI derived from the queryexpression.

Optionally, the request URI is sent to the user's web terminal, therebyenabling the user's web terminal to retrieve a corresponding resourcevia the internet.

Optionally, the at least one search term is associated, in the pagedescription, with a zone of the substrate containing the position of thesensing device.

Optionally, at least one search term is a keyword extracted from text inthe zone.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms identifies a concept, aperson, an organization, a place, a product, a publication, a weathercondition, a geographic location, a date, a time of day, a day of theweek, a current user location, a user home location, a user demographicindicator, a user preference, a search history, a click-through history,a user interest or a user language.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms is derived from a resourcedescription, a subject description, a user description or an environmentdescription.

Optionally, the query expression is generated by combining the searchterms using operators selected from the group comprising: Booleanoperators, proximity constraint operators and occurrence constraintoperators.

Optionally, the at least one search term is a primary search term and atleast one of the other search terms of the query expression is a contextsearch term, said context search term being derived from a word, phrase,line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document or regioncontaining the zone.

Optionally, said context search term is contained in or associated witha word, phrase, line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document orregion containing the zone.

Optionally, the search results all contain the primary search term, andare ranked according to whether they contain the context search term.

Optionally, said keyword comprises a plurality associated words, saidplurality of associated words being identified from at least one word inthe zone.

Optionally, the page description comprises a lexicon for identifyingsaid plurality of associated words from the at least one word and atleast one adjacent word.

Optionally, the at least one primary search term is a keyword and the atleast one context search term is derived by at least partiallydetermining a meaning of said keyword.

Optionally, the meaning is at least partially determined using a methodselected from the group comprising: identifying a part of speech forsaid keyword; identifying a supersense of said keyword; and identifyinga concept corresponding to said keyword in an ontology.

Optionally, the results resource is derived, at least partially, fromthe request using at least one of: a concordance; a semanticconcordance; a database of search terms associated with advertisements;and a search engine.

Optionally, the search engine is selected using said page description.

Optionally, the substrate is selected from the group comprising: aprinted document, a printed form, a page of a printed publication, apackage for a product item, a label for a product item and a surface ofa product item.

Optionally, the resource is a webpage.

In a further aspect there is provided a computer system for providinginformation to a user via a printed substrate, said substrate comprisinguser information and coded data indicative of a region identityassociated with the substrate and of a plurality of locations on thesubstrate, said computer system being configured for:

-   -   receiving interaction data indicative of the region identity and        at least one position of a sensing device relative to the        substrate, the sensing device generating the interaction data,        when operatively positioned or moved relative to the substrate,        by reading at least some of the coded data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity;    -   determining, using the page description and the position of the        sensing device, whether the sensing device is positioned within        a zone of a hyperlink on the substrate; and    -   (i) if the sensing device is positioned within a zone of a        hyperlink:        -   sending a hyperlink URI or a hyperlinked resource            corresponding to the hyperlink to the user;            or    -   (ii) if the sensing device is positioned outside a zone of a        hyperlink:        -   generating a query expression comprising one or more search            terms, at least one of said search terms being identified            using the page description and the at least one position of            the sensing device;        -   forming a request using the query expression; and        -   sending the request, or a results resource including search            results obtained using the request, to the user.

In a third aspect the present invention provides a method of enabling auser to initiate an action via a printed substrate, said substratecomprising user information and coded data, said coded data beingindicative of a region identity associated with the substrate and of aplurality of locations on the substrate, said method comprising thesteps of:

-   -   receiving, in a computer system and from a sensing device, mode        data and interaction data, the sensing device being operable in        a plurality of modes and the mode data being indicative of one        of said modes, the interaction data being indicative of the        region identity and at least one position of the sensing device        relative to the substrate, the sensing device generating the        interaction data, when operatively positioned or moved relative        to the substrate, by reading at least some of the coded data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity;    -   determining a mode of the sensing device using the mode data;    -   identifying an action using said mode, said interaction data and        said page description; and    -   initiating said action.

Optionally, the sensing device is operable in two or more modes selectedfrom the group comprising: a hyperlinking mode; a searching mode; acontent-extraction mode; a mouse mode; and a handwriting mode.

Optionally, if the sensing device is determined to be in a hyperlinkingmode, the method comprises the steps of:

-   -   determining, using the page description and the position of the        sensing device, whether the sensing device is positioned within        a zone of a hyperlink on the substrate; and    -   sending a hyperlink URI or a hyperlinked resource to the user        only if the sensing device is positioned within said zone.

Optionally, the sensing device is operable in any mode combinationselected from the group comprising: at least hyperlinking and searchingmodes; at least hyperlinking and content-extraction modes; at leasthyperlinking and mouse modes; at least hyperlinking and handwritingmodes; at least searching and content-extraction modes, at leastsearching and mouse modes; at least searching and handwriting modes; atleast content-extraction and mouse modes; at least content-extractionand handwriting modes; or at least mouse and handwriting modes.

Optionally, the hyperlink URI is sent to the user's web terminal,thereby enabling the user's web terminal to retrieve the correspondinghyperlinked resource via the internet.

Optionally, if the sensing device is determined to be in a searchingmode the method comprises the steps of:

-   -   generating a query expression comprising one or more search        terms, at least one of said search terms being identified using        the page description and the at least one position of the        sensing device;    -   forming a request using the query expression; and    -   sending the request, or a results resource including search        results obtained using the request, to the user.

Optionally, the request is sent as a request URI to a user's webterminal, thereby enabling the user's web terminal to retrieve theresults resource via the internet.

Optionally, if the sensing device is determined to be incontent-extraction mode, the method comprises the steps of:

-   -   identifying content using the page description and the at least        one position of the sensing device; and    -   extracting the content from the page description.

In a further aspect there is provided a method further comprising thestep of:

-   -   sending the content to the user.

Optionally, if the sensing device is determined to be in a handwritingmode, the method comprises the step of:

-   -   associating said at least one position, as digital ink, with a        corresponding part of the page description.

Optionally, said part of said page description describes a field of aform, and said method further comprises interpreting said digital ink asinput into said field.

Optionally, if the sensing device is determined to be in a mouse mode,the method comprises the steps of:

-   -   interpreting said at least one position as a cursor position in        a graphical user interface.

Optionally, said at least one position is interpreted as a relative orabsolute cursor position.

Optionally, the at least one search term is associated, in the pagedescription, with a zone of the substrate containing the position of thesensing device.

Optionally, at least one search term is a keyword extracted from text inthe zone.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms identifies a concept, aperson, an organization, a place, a product, a publication, a weathercondition, a geographic location, a date, a time of day, a day of theweek, a current user location, a user home location, a user demographicindicator, a user preference, a search history, a click-through history,a user interest or a user language.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms is derived from a resourcedescription, a subject description, a user description or an environmentdescription.

Optionally, the query expression is generated by combining the searchterms using operators selected from the group comprising: Booleanoperators, proximity constraint operators and occurrence constraintoperators.

Optionally, the at least one search term is a primary search term and atleast one of the other search terms of the query expression is a contextsearch term, said context search term being derived from a word, phrase,line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document or regioncontaining the zone.

Optionally, said context search term is contained in or associated witha word, phrase, line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document orregion containing the zone.

In a further aspect there is provided a system for enabling a user toinitiate an action via a printed substrate, said substrate comprisinguser information and coded data, said coded data being indicative of aregion identity associated with the substrate and of a plurality oflocations on the substrate, said system comprising a computer systemconfigured for:

-   -   receiving mode data and interaction data from a sensing device,        the sensing device being operable in a plurality of modes and        the mode data being indicative of one of said modes, the        indicating data being indicative of the region identity and at        least one position of the sensing device relative to the        substrate, the sensing device generating the interaction data,        when operatively positioned or moved relative to the substrate,        by reading at least some of the coded data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity;    -   determining a mode of the sensing device using the mode data;    -   identifying an action using said mode, said interaction data and        said page description; and    -   initiating said action.

In a fourth aspect the present invention provides a method of enabling auser to initiate an action via a printed substrate, said substratecomprising user information and coded data indicative of a regionidentity associated with the substrate and of a plurality of locationson the substrate, said method comprising the steps of:

-   -   receiving, in a computer system, interaction data identifying        the region identity and at least one position of a sensing        device relative to the substrate, the sensing device generating        the interaction data, when operatively positioned or moved        relative to the substrate, by reading at least some of the coded        data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity;    -   determining a gesture of interaction using the at least one        position;    -   identifying an action using said gesture, said interaction data        and said page description; and    -   initiating said action.

Optionally, the gesture is selected from the group comprising: click,point, line, swipe, underline and lasso.

Optionally, the gesture indicates any one of the group comprising: ahyperlinking gesture, a searching gesture and a content extractiongesture.

Optionally, if the gesture is determined to be a hyperlinking gesture,the method comprises the steps of:

-   -   determining, using the page description and the at least one        position of the sensing device, whether the sensing device is        positioned within a zone of a hyperlink on the substrate; and    -   sending a hyperlink URI or a hyperlinked resource to the user        only if the sensing device is positioned within said zone.

Optionally, the hyperlink URI is sent to the user's web terminal,thereby enabling the user's web terminal to retrieve the correspondinghyperlinked resource via the internet.

Optionally, said hyperlinking gesture is a click or point.

Optionally, if the gesture is determined to be a content extractiongesture, the method comprises the steps of:

-   -   identifying content using the page description and the at least        one position of the sensing device; and    -   extracting the content from the page description.

In a further aspect there is provided a method further comprising thestep of:

-   -   sending the content to the user.

Optionally, the content extraction gesture is a lasso.

Optionally, if the gesture is determined to be a searching gesture, themethod comprises the steps of:

-   -   generating a query expression comprising one or more search        terms, at least one of said search terms being identified using        the page description and the at least one position of the        sensing device;    -   forming a request using the query expression; and    -   sending the request, or a results resource including search        results obtained using the request, to the user.

Optionally, the searching gesture is selected from the group comprising:line, underline and swipe.

Optionally, the request is sent as a request URI to the user's webterminal, thereby enabling the user's web terminal to retrieve theresults resource via the internet.

Optionally, the at least one search term is associated, in the pagedescription, with a zone of the substrate containing the position of thesensing device.

Optionally, at least one search term is a keyword extracted from text inthe zone.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms identifies a concept, aperson, an organization, a place, a product, a publication, a weathercondition, a geographic location, a date, a time of day, a day of theweek, a current user location, a user home location, a user demographicindicator, a user preference, a search history, a click-through history,a user interest or a user language.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms is derived from a resourcedescription, a subject description, a user description or an environmentdescription.

Optionally, the query expression is generated by combining the searchterms using operators selected from the group comprising: Booleanoperators, proximity constraint operators and occurrence constraintoperators.

Optionally, the at least one search term is a primary search term and atleast one of the other search terms of the query expression is a contextsearch term, said context search term being derived from a word, phrase,line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document or regioncontaining the zone.

Optionally, said context search term is contained in or associated witha word, phrase, line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document orregion containing the zone.

In a further aspect there is provided a system for enabling a user toinitiate an action via a printed substrate, said substrate comprisinguser information and coded data indicative of a region identityassociated with the substrate and of a plurality of locations on thesubstrate, said system comprising a computer system configured for:

-   -   receiving interaction data identifying the region identity and        at least one position of a sensing device relative to the        substrate, the sensing device generating the interaction data,        when operatively positioned or moved relative to the substrate,        by reading at least some of the coded data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity;    -   determining a gesture of interaction using the at least one        position;    -   identifying an action using said gesture, said interaction data        and said page description; and    -   initiating said action.

In a fifth aspect the present invention provides a system for enabling auser to access information, said system comprising:

-   -   a printed substrate, said substrate comprising user information        and coded data indicative of a region identity associated with        the substrate and of a plurality of locations on the substrate;        and    -   a sensing device comprising:        -   an optical sensor for sensing at least some of the coded            data when the sensing device is operatively positioned or            moved relative to the substrate;        -   a mode selector for allowing the user to select a mode of            operation;        -   a processor for generating mode data using the selected mode            and interaction data using the sensed coded data, said mode            data being indicative of the selected mode, said interaction            data being indicative of the region identity and at least            one position of the sensing device relative to the            substrate; and        -   means for communicating the mode data and the interaction            data to a computer system,            wherein the mode data together with the interaction data            determine a response in the computer system.

Optionally, the mode selector comprises one or more buttons.

Optionally, the sensing device is operable in two or more modes selectedfrom the group comprising: a hyperlinking mode; a searching mode; acontent-extraction mode; a mouse mode; and a handwriting mode.

Optionally, the sensing device is operable in any mode combinationselected from the group comprising: at least hyperlinking and searchingmodes; at least hyperlinking and content-extraction modes; at leasthyperlinking and mouse modes; at least hyperlinking and handwritingmodes; at least searching and content-extraction modes, at leastsearching and mouse modes; at least searching and handwriting modes; atleast content-extraction and mouse modes; at least content-extractionand handwriting modes; or at least mouse and handwriting modes.

Optionally, the hyperlinking mode instructs the computer system to senda hyperlink URI or a corresponding hyperlinked resource to the user,provided that the sensing device is positioned within a zone of ahyperlink on the printed substrate.

Optionally, the searching mode instructs the computer system to:

-   -   generate a query expression comprising one or more search terms,        at least one of said search terms being identified using a page        description corresponding to the printed substrate and the at        least one position of the sensing device;    -   form a request using the query expression; and    -   send the request, or a results resource including search results        obtained using the request, to the user.

Optionally, the content-extraction mode instructs the computer system toextract content from a page description corresponding to the printedsubstrate.

Optionally, the handwriting mode instructs the computer system toassociate said at least one position, as digital ink, with acorresponding part of a page description corresponding to the printedsubstrate.

Optionally, the mouse mode instructs the computer system to interpretsaid at least one position as a cursor position in a graphical userinterface.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms identifies a concept, aperson, an organization, a place, a product, a publication, a weathercondition, a geographic location, a date, a time of day, a day of theweek, a current user location, a user home location, a user demographicindicator, a user preference, a search history, a click-through history,a user interest or a user language.

Optionally, the substrate is selected from the group comprising: aprinted document, a printed form, a page of a printed publication, apackage for a product item, a label for a product item and a surface ofa product item.

In a further aspect there is provided a sensing device for use incooperation with a printed substrate, said substrate comprising userinformation and coded data indicative of a region identity associatedwith the substrate and of a plurality of locations on the substrate,said sensing device comprising:

-   -   an optical sensor for sensing at least some of the coded data        when the sensing device is operatively positioned or moved        relative to the substrate;    -   a mode selector for allowing the user to select a mode of        operation;    -   a processor for generating mode data using the selected mode and        interaction data using the sensed coded data, said mode data        being indicative of the selected mode, said interaction data        being indicative of the region identity and at least one        position of the sensing device relative to the substrate; and    -   means for communicating the mode data and interaction data to a        computer system, wherein the mode data together with the        interaction data determine a response in the computer system.

Optionally, the mode selector comprises one or more buttons.

Optionally, the sensing device is operable in two or more modes selectedfrom the group comprising: a hyperlinking mode; a searching mode; acontent-extraction mode; a mouse mode; and a handwriting mode.

Optionally, the hyperlinking mode instructs the computer system to senda hyperlink URI or a corresponding hyperlinked resource to a user,provided that the sensing device is positioned within a zone of ahyperlink on the printed substrate.

Optionally, the searching mode instructs the computer system to:

-   -   generate a query expression comprising one or more search terms,        at least one of said search terms being identified using a page        description corresponding to the printed substrate and the at        least one position of the sensing device;    -   form a request using the query expression; and    -   send the request, or a results resource including search results        obtained using the request, to a user.

Optionally, the content-extraction mode instructs the computer system toextract content from a page description corresponding to the printedsubstrate.

Optionally, the handwriting mode instructs the computer system toassociate said at least one position, as digital ink, with acorresponding part of a page description corresponding to the printedsubstrate.

Optionally, the mouse mode instructs the computer system to interpretsaid at least one position as a cursor position in a graphical userinterface.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms identifies a concept, aperson, an organization, a place, a product, a publication, a weathercondition, a geographic location, a date, a time of day, a day of theweek, a current user location, a user home location, a user demographicindicator, a user preference, a search history, a click-through history,a user interest or a user language.

Optionally, the substrate is selected from the group comprising: aprinted document, a printed form, a page of a printed publication, apackage for a product item, a label for a product item and a surface ofa product item.

In a sixth aspect the present invention provides a method of providinginformation to a user via a printed substrate, said substrate comprisinga graphic image and coded data indicative of a region identityassociated with the substrate and of a plurality of locations on thesubstrate, said method comprising the steps of:

-   -   receiving, in a computer system, interaction data indicative of        the region identity and at least one position of a sensing        device relative to the image, the sensing device generating the        interaction data when operatively positioned or moved relative        to the image by reading at least some of the coded data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity,    -   generating a query expression comprising one or more search        terms, at least one of said search terms being associated, in        the page description, with a zone of the graphic image        containing the position of the sensing device;    -   forming a request using the query expression; and    -   sending the request, or a results resource including search        results obtained using the request, to the user.

Optionally, the request is sent to the user's web terminal, therebyenabling the user's web terminal to retrieve the results resource viathe internet.

Optionally, the request is a request URI derived from the at least onesearch term.

Optionally, the graphic image has a plurality of zones associatedtherewith, each zone having at least one search term associatedtherewith.

Optionally, said zones are layered.

Optionally, said query expression comprises a first search termassociated with a first zone layer and a second search term associatedwith a second zone layer.

Optionally, the first search term is a primary search term and thesecond search term is a context search term.

Optionally, said first zone layer is higher than said second zone layer.

Optionally, the search results all contain the primary search term, andare ranked according to whether they contain the context search term.

Optionally, the graphic image is a photograph or a page image.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms identifies a concept, aperson, an organization, a place, a product, a publication, a weathercondition, a geographic location, a date, a time of day, a day of theweek, a current user location, a user home location, a user demographicindicator, a user preference, a search history, a click-through history,a user interest or a user language.

Optionally, at least one of said search terms is derived from a resourcedescription, a subject description, a user description or an environmentdescription.

Optionally, the query expression is generated by combining the searchterms using operators selected from the group comprising: Booleanoperators, proximity constraint operators and occurrence constraintoperators.

Optionally, the results resource is derived, at least partially, fromthe request using at least one of: a concordance; a semanticconcordance; a database of search terms associated with advertisements;and a search engine.

Optionally, the search engine is selected using said page description.

Optionally, the substrate is selected from the group comprising: aprinted document, a printed form, a page of a printed publication, apackage for a product item, a label for a product item and a surface ofa product item.

Optionally, the resource is a webpage.

In a further aspect there is provided a system for providing informationto a user via a printed substrate, said substrate comprising a graphicimage and coded data indicative of a region identity associated with thesubstrate and of a plurality of locations on the substrate, said systemcomprising a computer system configured for:

-   -   receiving interaction data indicative of the region identity and        at least one position of a sensing device relative to the image,        the sensing device generating the interaction data when        operatively positioned or moved relative to the image by reading        at least some of the coded data;    -   identifying and retrieving at least part of a page description        corresponding to the printed substrate using the region        identity,    -   generating a query expression comprising one or more search        terms, at least one of said search terms being associated, in        the page description, with a zone of the graphic image        containing the position of the sensing device;    -   forming a request using the query expression; and    -   sending the request, or a results resource including search        results obtained using the request, to the user.

In a seventh aspect the present invention provides a method ofcollecting a click-through fee from an advertiser, said methodcomprising the steps of:

-   -   (a) providing a printed substrate, said substrate comprising        user information and coded data indicative of a region identity        associated with the substrate and of a plurality of locations on        the substrate;    -   (b) reading at least some of the coded data when a user        operatively positions or moves a sensing device relative to the        substrate;    -   (c) generating interaction data in the sensing device, said        interaction data being indicative of the region identity and at        least one position of the sensing device relative to the        substrate;    -   (d) receiving the interaction data in a relay device;    -   (e) relaying the interaction data from the relay device to a        first computer system;    -   (f) identifying, in the first computer system, a page        description corresponding to the printed substrate using the        region identity;    -   (g) determining, in the first computer system, a request using        the page description and the interaction data;    -   (h) obtaining or forming, in a second computer system, a        resource using the request, a content of said resource including        at least one advertisement;    -   (i) sending the resource to the relay device;    -   (j) displaying the resource on a display associated with the        relay device;    -   (k) the user selecting an advertisement in said resource and        retrieving a hyperlinked advertiser resource;    -   (l) charging a fee to an advertiser associated with the        advertisement, wherein a proportion of said fee is shared with a        facilitator of said method.

Optionally, the request is encoded in a request URI.

Optionally, step (g) comprises the further steps of:

-   -   sending the request from the first computer system to the relay        device;    -   relaying the request from the relay device to the second        computer system;

Optionally, the facilitator is selected from the group comprising:

-   -   a content provider of said resource;    -   a sensing device issuer;    -   a relay device issuer;    -   the user;    -   a publisher of the printed substrate;    -   an author of the printed substrate;    -   a rights holder associated with the user information;    -   an advertiser associated with printed advertisements on the        printed substrate.

Optionally, said first computer system determines context using theinteraction data, said request identifying said context, and said atleast one advertisement being selected using said context.

Optionally, said context is derived from any one of the groupcomprising: a resource description; a subject description; a userdescription; and an environment description.

Optionally, the context comprises at least one context term selectedfrom the group comprising: a word, a keyword, a concept, a person, anorganization, a place, a product, a publication, a weather condition, ageographic location, a date, a time of day, a day of the week, a currentuser location, a user home location, a user demographic indicator, auser preference, a search history, a click-through history, a userinterest or a user language.

Optionally, the resource is a blended resource comprising contentcorresponding to the request and the at least one advertisement.

Optionally, said at least one advertisement is selected at leastpartially using further context from said content.

Optionally, said first computer system determines context using theinteraction data, said request including said context, and said contentbeing selected using said context.

Optionally, the first and second computer systems are the same computersystem.

In a further aspect there is provided a method of collecting a salescommission fee from a merchant, said method comprising the steps of:

-   -   (a) providing a printed substrate, said substrate comprising        user information and coded data indicative of a region identity        associated with the substrate and of a plurality of locations on        the substrate;    -   (b) reading at least some of the coded data when a user        operatively positions or moves a sensing device relative to the        substrate;    -   (c) generating interaction data in the sensing device, said        interaction data being indicative of the region identity and at        least one position of the sensing device relative to the        substrate;    -   (d) receiving the interaction data in a relay device;    -   (e) relaying the interaction data from the relay device to a        first computer system;    -   (f) identifying, in the first computer system, a page        description corresponding to the printed substrate using the        region identity;    -   (g) determining, in the first computer system, a request using        the page description and the interaction data;    -   (h) obtaining or forming, in a second computer system, a        resource using the request, a content of said resource including        at least one merchant hyperlink;    -   (i) sending the resource to the relay device;    -   (j) displaying the resource on a display associated with the        relay device;    -   (k) the user selecting a merchant hyperlink in said resource and        making a purchase via a hyperlinked merchant resource; and    -   (l) charging a fee to a merchant associated with the merchant        hyperlink, wherein a proportion of said fee is shared with a        facilitator of said method.

Optionally, the request is encoded in a request URI.

Optionally, step (g) comprises the further steps of:

-   -   sending the request from the first computer system to the relay        device;    -   relaying the request from the relay device to the second        computer system;

Optionally, the facilitator is selected from the group comprising:

-   -   a content provider of said resource;    -   a sensing device issuer;    -   a relay device issuer;    -   the user;    -   a publisher of the printed substrate;    -   an author of the printed substrate;    -   a rights holder associated with the user information;    -   an advertiser associated with printed advertisements on the        printed substrate.

Optionally, said first computer system determines context using theinteraction data, said request identifying said context, and said atleast one advertisement being selected using said context.

Optionally, said context is derived from any one of the groupcomprising: a resource description; a subject description; a userdescription; and an environment description.

Optionally, the context comprises at least one context term selectedfrom the group comprising: a word, a keyword, a concept, a person, anorganization, a place, a product, a publication, a weather condition, ageographic location, a date, a time of day, a day of the week, a currentuser location, a user home location, a user demographic indicator, auser preference, a search history, a click-through history, a userinterest or a user language.

Optionally, the resource is a blended resource comprising contentcorresponding to the request and the at least one merchant hyperlink.

Optionally, said at least one merchant hyperlink is selected at leastpartially using further context from said content.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

Preferred and other embodiments of the invention will now be described,by way of non-limiting example only, with reference to the accompanyingdrawings, in which:

FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of basic netpage architecture;

FIG. 2 is a schematic of a the relationship between a sample printednetpage and its online page description;

FIG. 3 shows an embodiment of basic netpage architecture with variousalternatives for the relay device;

FIG. 3A illustrates a collection of netpage servers, Web terminals,printers and relays interconnected via a network;

FIG. 4 is a schematic view of a high-level structure of a printednetpage and its online page description;

FIG. 5A is a plan view showing a structure of a netpage tag;

FIG. 5B is a plan view showing a relationship between a set of the tagsshown in FIG. 5 a and a field of view of a netpage sensing device in theform of a netpage pen;

FIG. 6A is a plan view showing an alternative structure of a netpagetag;

FIG. 6B is a plan view showing a relationship between a set of the tagsshown in FIG. 6 a and a field of view of a netpage sensing device in theform of a netpage pen;

FIG. 6C is a plan view showing an arrangement of nine of the tags shownin FIG. 6 a where targets are shared between adjacent tags;

FIG. 6D is a plan view showing the interleaving and rotation of thesymbols of the four codewords of the tag shown in FIG. 6 a;

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of a tag image processing and decoding algorithm;

FIG. 8 is a perspective view of a netpage pen and its associatedtag-sensing field-of-view cone;

FIG. 9 is a perspective exploded view of the netpage pen shown in FIG.8;

FIG. 10 is a schematic block diagram of a pen controller for the netpagepen shown in FIGS. 8 and 9;

FIG. 11 is a schematic view of a pen class diagram;

FIG. 12 is a schematic view of a document and page description classdiagram;

FIG. 13 is a schematic view of a document and page ownership classdiagram;

FIG. 14 is a schematic view of a terminal element specialization classdiagram;

FIG. 15 is a schematic view of a static element specialization classdiagram;

FIG. 16 is a schematic view of a hyperlink element class diagram;

FIG. 17 is a schematic view of a hyperlink element specialization classdiagram;

FIG. 18 is a schematic view of a hyperlinked group class diagram;

FIG. 19 is a schematic view of a form class diagram;

FIG. 20 is a schematic view of a digital ink class diagram;

FIG. 21 is a schematic view of a field element specialization classdiagram;

FIG. 22 is a schematic view of a checkbox field class diagram;

FIG. 23 is a schematic view of a text field class diagram;

FIG. 24 is a schematic view of a signature field class diagram;

FIG. 25 is a flowchart of an input processing algorithm;

FIG. 25A is a detailed flowchart of one step of the flowchart of FIG.25;

FIG. 26 is a schematic view of a hyperlink request class diagram;

FIG. 27 is a schematic view of a raw digital ink class diagram.

FIG. 28 is a schematic block diagram of a printer controller for thenetpage printer;

FIG. 29 is a schematic block diagram of duplexed print enginecontrollers and printheads associated with the printer controller shownin FIG. 28;

FIG. 30 is a schematic block diagram of the print engine controllershown in FIGS. 28 and 29;

FIG. 31 is a schematic view of an article group class diagram;

FIG. 32 is a schematic view of a selection hyperlink class diagram;

FIG. 33 is a schematic view of a selection page server command classdiagram;

FIG. 34 is a schematic view of a selection retrieval protocol;

FIG. 35 is a schematic view of a styled text object and formattedtextflow fragment class diagram;

FIG. 36 is a schematic view of a page fragment bearing some printedtext, with two words of the text selected by circumscription (lasso);

FIG. 37 is a schematic view of a page fragment bearing a set of commandsthat operate on the current selection;

FIG. 38 is a styled paragraph and formatted text line object diagram;

FIG. 39 shows an alternative embodiment of netpage archtitecture;

FIG. 40 shows a further alternative embodiment of netpage archtitecture;

FIG. 41 shows a click gesture to select a word of text;

FIG. 42 shows a swipe or underlining gesture to select three words oftext;

FIG. 43 shows a stroke interpreter object model;

FIG. 44 shows a button assignment object model;

FIG. 45 shows an example button assignment;

FIG. 46 shows gesture based behavior;

FIG. 47 shows how buttons and gestures can be combined to determinebehavior;

FIG. 48 is an example of using a parameterized URI;

FIG. 49 shows a <term> markup example;

FIG. 50 shows a “Text and Product Search” Stroke Interpreter;

FIG. 51 shows how a “Text and Product Search” can be disambiguated viagestures;

FIG. 52 shows online linking from printed editorial information;

FIG. 53 shows an existing document publishing process;

FIG. 54 shows a Phase A-1 document publishing process;

FIG. 55 shows a Phase A-2 document publishing process;

FIG. 56 shows a Phase A-3 document publishing process;

FIG. 57 shows a Phase D-1 & D-2 document publishing process;

FIG. 58 provides a key to the use case diagrams in FIGS. 59 to 62;

FIG. 59 shows online linking from a printed ad and from productreferences;

FIG. 60 shows alternative online linking from a printed ad and fromproduct references;

FIG. 61 shows online linking from printed editorial information;

FIG. 62 shows a search from printed content;

FIG. 63 shows printed content interaction followed by onlineclick-through and purchase;

FIG. 64 shows printed ad interaction followed by online click-throughand purchase;

FIG. 65 shows interactions between entities during printed contentinteraction and ad click-through;

FIG. 66 shows interactions between entities during paper interaction andonline purchase;

FIG. 67 is a document class diagram;

FIG. 68 is a group element class diagram;

FIG. 69 is a zone class diagram;

FIG. 70 is a visual element class diagram;

FIG. 71 is a field element class diagram;

FIG. 72 is a styled text object with inline markup class diagram;

FIG. 73 shows some document examples;

FIG. 74 is a resource class diagram;

FIG. 75 is a resource description class diagram;

FIG. 76 is a subject description class diagram;

FIG. 77 is an ontology class diagram;

FIG. 78 is a lexicon class diagram;

FIG. 79 is a noun concept specialization class diagram;

FIG. 80 is a portal specification class diagram;

FIG. 81 is a search specification class diagram;

FIG. 82 is a further search specification class diagram;

FIG. 83 is an environment description class diagram;

FIG. 84 is a location class diagram;

FIG. 85 is a user description class diagram;

FIG. 86 is a query description class diagram;

FIG. 87 is an occurrence and proximity constraint class diagram;

FIG. 88 shows concordance and semantic concordance class diagrams;

FIG. 89 is an advertiser and ad class diagram;

FIG. 90 is an entity class diagram;

FIG. 91 shows a contextual document search data flow;

FIG. 92 shows query processing strategies;

FIG. 93 shows a contextual ad placement data flow;

FIG. 94 shows region elements for the regions in FIG. 95; and

FIG. 95 shows a photo with subject descriptions.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED AND OTHER EMBODIMENTS

Note: Memjet™ is a trade mark of Silverbrook Research Pty Ltd, Australia

In the preferred embodiment, the invention is configured to work withthe netpage networked computer system, a detailed overview of whichfollows. It will be appreciated that not every implementation willnecessarily embody all or even most of the specific details andextensions discussed below in relation to the basic system. However, thesystem is described in its most complete form to reduce the need forexternal reference when attempting to understand the context in whichthe preferred embodiments and aspects of the present invention operate.

In brief summary, the preferred form of the netpage system employs acomputer interface in the form of a mapped surface, that is, a physicalsurface which contains references to a map of the surface maintained ina computer system. The map references can be queried by an appropriatesensing device. Depending upon the specific implementation, the mapreferences may be encoded visibly or invisibly, and defined in such away that a local query on the mapped surface yields an unambiguous mapreference both within the map and among different maps. The computersystem can contain information about features on the mapped surface, andsuch information can be retrieved based on map references supplied by asensing device used with the mapped surface. The information thusretrieved can take the form of actions which are initiated by thecomputer system on behalf of the operator in response to the operator'sinteraction with the surface features.

In its preferred form, the netpage system relies on the production of,and human interaction with, netpages. These are pages of text, graphicsand images printed on ordinary paper, but which work like interactivewebpages. Information is encoded on each page using ink which issubstantially invisible to the unaided human eye. The ink, however, andthereby the coded data, can be sensed by an optically imaging sensingdevice and transmitted to the netpage system. The sensing device maytake the form of a clicker (for clicking on a specific position on asurface), a pointer having a stylus (for pointing or gesturing on asurface using pointer strokes), or a pen having a marking nib (formarking a surface with ink when pointing, gesturing or writing on thesurface).

In one embodiment, active buttons and hyperlinks on each page can beclicked with the sensing device to request information from the networkor to signal preferences to a network server. In one embodiment, textwritten by hand on a netpage is automatically recognized and convertedto computer text in the netpage system, allowing forms to be filled in.In other embodiments, signatures recorded on a netpage are automaticallyverified, allowing e-commerce transactions to be securely authorized. Inother embodiments, text on a netpage may be clicked or gestured toinitiate a search based on keywords indicated by the user.

As illustrated in FIG. 2, a printed netpage 1 can represent ainteractive form which can be filled in by the user both physically, onthe printed page, and “electronically”, via communication between thepen and the netpage system. The example shows a “Request” formcontaining name and address fields and a submit button. The netpageconsists of graphic data 2 printed using visible ink, and coded data 3printed as a collection of tags 4 using invisible ink. The correspondingpage description 5, stored on the netpage network, describes theindividual elements of the netpage. In particular it describes the typeand spatial extent (zone) of each interactive element (i.e. text fieldor button in the example), to allow the netpage system to correctlyinterpret input via the netpage. The submit button 6, for example, has azone 7 which corresponds to the spatial extent of the correspondinggraphic 8.

As illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 3, netpage sensing device 101, such as thepen shown in FIGS. 8 and 9 and described in more detail below, works inconjunction with a netpage relay device 601, which is anInternet-connected device for home, office or mobile use. The pen iswireless and communicates securely with the netpage relay device 601 viaa short-range radio link 9. In an alternative embodiment, the netpagepen 101 utilises a wired connection, such as a USB or other serialconnection, to the relay device 601.

The relay device 601 performs the basic function of relaying interactiondata to a page server 10, which interprets the interaction data. Asshown in FIG. 3, the relay device 601 may, for example, take the form ofa personal computer 601 a, a netpage printer 601 b or some other relay601 c.

The netpage printer 601 b is able to deliver, periodically or on demand,personalized newspapers, magazines, catalogs, brochures and otherpublications, all printed at high quality as interactive netpages.Unlike a personal computer, the netpage printer is an appliance whichcan be, for example, wall-mounted adjacent to an area where the morningnews is first consumed, such as in a user's kitchen, near a breakfasttable, or near the household's point of departure for the day. It alsocomes in tabletop, desktop, portable and miniature versions. Netpagesprinted on-demand at their point of consumption combine the ease-of-useof paper with the timeliness and interactivity of an interactive medium.

Alternatively, the netpage relay device 601 may be a portable device,such as a mobile phone or PDA, a laptop or desktop computer, or aninformation appliance connected to a shared display, such as a TV. Ifthe relay device 601 is not a netpage printer 601 b which printsnetpages digitally and on demand, the netpages may be printed bytraditional analog printing presses, using such techniques as offsetlithography, flexography, screen printing, relief printing androtogravure, as well as by digital printing presses, using techniquessuch as drop-on-demand inkjet, continuous inkjet, dye transfer, andlaser printing.

As shown in FIG. 3, the netpage sensing device 101 interacts with thecoded data on a printed netpage 1, or other printed substate such as alabel of a product item 251, and communicates, via a short-range radiolink 9, the interaction to the relay 601. The relay 601 sendscorresponding interaction data to the relevant netpage page server 10for interpretation. Raw data received from the sensing device 101 may berelayed directly to the page server 10 as interaction data.Alternatively, the interaction data may be encoded in the form of aninteraction URI and transmitted to the page server 10 via a user's webbrowser. Of course, the relay device 601 (e.g. mobile phone) mayincorporate a web browser and a user display.

In appropriate circumstances, the page server sends a correspondingmessage to application computer software running on a netpageapplication server 13. The application server may in turn send aresponse which is displayed on a user display device associated with therelay 601, or printed on the originating netpage printer.

The netpage relay device 601 can be configured to support any number ofsensing devices, and a sensing device can work with any number ofnetpage relays. In the preferred implementation, each netpage sensingdevice 101 has a unique identifier. This allows each user to maintain adistinct profile with respect to a netpage page server 10 or applicationserver 13.

Digital, on-demand delivery of netpages 1 may be performed by thenetpage printer 601 b, which exploits the growing availability ofbroadband Internet access. Netpage publication servers 14 on the netpagenetwork are configured to deliver print-quality publications to netpageprinters. Periodical publications are delivered automatically tosubscribing netpage printers via pointcasting and multicasting Internetprotocols. Personalized publications are filtered and formattedaccording to individual user profiles.

A netpage pen may be registered with a netpage registration server 11and linked to one or more payment card accounts. This allows e-commercepayments to be securely authorized using the netpage pen. The netpageregistration server compares the signature captured by the netpage penwith a previously registered signature, allowing it to authenticate theuser's identity to an e-commerce server. Other biometrics can also beused to verify identity. One version of the netpage pen includesfingerprint scanning, verified in a similar way by the netpageregistration server.

Netpage System Architecture

Each object model in the system is described using a Unified ModelingLanguage (UML) class diagram. A class diagram consists of a set ofobject classes connected by relationships, and two kinds ofrelationships are of interest here: associations and generalizations. Anassociation represents some kind of relationship between objects, i.e.between instances of classes. A generalization relates actual classes,and can be understood in the following way: if a class is thought of asthe set of all objects of that class, and class A is a generalization ofclass B, then B is simply a subset of A. The UML does not directlysupport second-order modelling—i.e. classes of classes.

Each class is drawn as a rectangle labelled with the name of the class.It contains a list of the attributes of the class, separated from thename by a horizontal line, and a list of the operations of the class,separated from the attribute list by a horizontal line. In the classdiagrams which follow, however, operations are never modelled.

An association is drawn as a line joining two classes, optionallylabelled at either end with the multiplicity of the association. Thedefault multiplicity is one. An asterisk (*) indicates a multiplicity of“many”, i.e. zero or more. Each association is optionally labelled withits name, and is also optionally labelled at either end with the role ofthe corresponding class. An open diamond indicates an aggregationassociation (“is-part-of”), and is drawn at the aggregator end of theassociation line.

A generalization relationship (“is-a”) is drawn as a solid line joiningtwo classes, with an arrow (in the form of an open triangle) at thegeneralization end.

When a class diagram is broken up into multiple diagrams, any classwhich is duplicated is shown with a dashed outline in all but the maindiagram which defines it. It is shown with attributes only where it isdefined.

1 Netpages

Netpages are the foundation on which a netpage network is built. Theyprovide a paper-based user interface to published information andinteractive services.

A netpage consists of a printed page (or other surface region) invisiblytagged with references to an online description of the page. The onlinepage description is maintained persistently by the netpage page server10. The page description describes the visible layout and content of thepage, including text, graphics and images. It also describes the inputelements on the page, including buttons, hyperlinks, and input fields. Anetpage allows markings made with a netpage pen on its surface to besimultaneously captured and processed by the netpage system.

Multiple netpages (for example, those printed by analog printingpresses) can share the same page description. However, to allow inputthrough otherwise identical pages to be distinguished, each netpage maybe assigned a unique page identifier. This page ID has sufficientprecision to distinguish between a very large number of netpages.

Each reference to the page description is encoded in a printed tag. Thetag identifies the unique page on which it appears, and therebyindirectly identifies the page description. The tag also identifies itsown position on the page. Characteristics of the tags are described inmore detail below.

Tags are typically printed in infrared-absorptive ink on any substratewhich is infrared-reflective, such as ordinary paper, or in infraredfluorescing ink. Near-infrared wavelengths are invisible to the humaneye but are easily sensed by a solid-state image sensor with anappropriate filter.

A tag is sensed by an area image sensor in the netpage sensing device,and the tag data is transmitted to the netpage system via the nearestnetpage relay device. The pen is wireless and communicates with thenetpage relay device via a short-range radio link. Tags are sufficientlysmall and densely arranged that the sensing device can reliably image atleast one tag even on a single click on the page. It is important thatthe pen recognize the page ID and position on every interaction with thepage, since the interaction is stateless. Tags are error-correctablyencoded to make them partially tolerant to surface damage.

The netpage page server 10 maintains a unique page instance for eachunique printed netpage, allowing it to maintain a distinct set ofuser-supplied values for input fields in the page description for eachprinted netpage.

The relationship between the page description, the page instance, andthe printed netpage is shown in FIG. 4. The printed netpage may be partof a printed netpage document 45. The page instance may be associatedwith both the netpage printer which printed it and, if known, thenetpage user who requested it.

2 Netpage Tags 2.1 Tag Data Content

In a preferred form, each tag identifies the region in which it appears,and the location of that tag within the region. A tag may also containflags which relate to the region as a whole or to the tag. One or moreflag bits may, for example, signal a tag sensing device to providefeedback indicative of a function associated with the immediate area ofthe tag, without the sensing device having to refer to a description ofthe region. A netpage pen may, for example, illuminate an “active area”LED when in the zone of a hyperlink.

As will be more clearly explained below, in a preferred embodiment, eachtag contains an easily recognized invariant structure which aids initialdetection, and which assists in minimizing the effect of any warpinduced by the surface or by the sensing process. The tags preferablytile the entire page, and are sufficiently small and densely arrangedthat the pen can reliably image at least one tag even on a single clickon the page. It is important that the pen recognize the page ID andposition on every interaction with the page, since the interaction isstateless.

In a preferred embodiment, the region to which a tag refers coincideswith an entire page, and the region ID encoded in the tag is thereforesynonymous with the page ID of the page on which the tag appears. Inother embodiments, the region to which a tag refers can be an arbitrarysubregion of a page or other surface. For example, it can coincide withthe zone of an interactive element, in which case the region ID candirectly identify the interactive element.

TABLE 1 Tag data Field Precision (bits) Page ID/Region ID 100 Tag ID/x-ycoordinates 16 Flags 4 Total 120

Each tag contains 120 bits of information, typically allocated as shownin Table 1. Assuming a maximum tag density of 64 per square inch, a16-bit tag ID supports a region size of up to 1024 square inches. Largerregions can be mapped continuously without increasing the tag IDprecision simply by using abutting regions and maps. The 100-bit regionID allows 2¹⁰⁰ (˜10³⁰ or a million trillion trillion) different regionsto be uniquely identified.

2.2 Tag Data Encoding

The 120 bits of tag data are redundantly encoded using a (15, 5)Reed-Solomon code. This yields 360 encoded bits consisting of 6codewords of 15 4-bit symbols each. The (15, 5) code allows up to 5symbol errors to be corrected per codeword, i.e. it is tolerant of asymbol error rate of up to 33% per codeword.

Each 4-bit symbol is represented in a spatially coherent way in the tag,and the symbols of the six codewords are interleaved spatially withinthe tag. This ensures that a burst error (an error affecting multiplespatially adjacent bits) damages a minimum number of symbols overall anda minimum number of symbols in any one codeword, thus maximising thelikelihood that the burst error can be fully corrected.

Any suitable error-correcting code code can be used in place of a (15,5) Reed-Solomon code, for example a Reed-Solomon code with more or lessredundancy, with the same or different symbol and codeword sizes;another block code; or a different kind of code, such as a convolutionalcode (see, for example, Stephen B. Wicker, Error Control Systems forDigital Communication and Storage, Prentice-Hall 1995, the contents ofwhich a herein incorporated by cross-reference).

2.3 Physical Tag Structure

The physical representation of the tag, shown in FIG. 5 a, includesfixed target structures 15, 16, 17 and variable data areas 18. The fixedtarget structures allow a sensing device such as the netpage pen todetect the tag and infer its three-dimensional orientation relative tothe sensor. The data areas contain representations of the individualbits of the encoded tag data.

To achieve proper tag reproduction, the tag is rendered at a resolutionof 256×256 dots. When printed at 1600 dots per inch this yields a tagwith a diameter of about 4 mm. At this resolution the tag is designed tobe surrounded by a “quiet area” of radius 16 dots. Since the quiet areais also contributed by adjacent tags, it only adds 16 dots to theeffective diameter of the tag.

The tag includes six target structures. A detection ring 15 allows thesensing device to initially detect the tag. The ring is easy to detectbecause it is rotationally invariant and because a simple correction ofits aspect ratio removes most of the effects of perspective distortion.An orientation axis 16 allows the sensing device to determine theapproximate planar orientation of the tag due to the yaw of the sensor.The orientation axis is skewed to yield a unique orientation. Fourperspective targets 17 allow the sensing device to infer an accuratetwo-dimensional perspective transform of the tag and hence an accuratethree-dimensional position and orientation of the tag relative to thesensor.

All target structures are redundantly large to improve their immunity tonoise.

The overall tag shape is circular. This supports, amongst other things,optimal tag packing on an irregular triangular grid. In combination withthe circular detection ring, this makes a circular arrangement of databits within the tag optimal. To maximise its size, each data bit isrepresented by a radial wedge in the form of an area bounded by tworadial lines and two concentric circular arcs. Each wedge has a minimumdimension of 8 dots at 1600 dpi and is designed so that its base (itsinner arc), is at least equal to this minimum dimension. The height ofthe wedge in the radial direction is always equal to the minimumdimension. Each 4-bit data symbol is represented by an array of 2×2wedges.

The 15 4-bit data symbols of each of the six codewords are allocated tothe four concentric symbol rings 18 a to 18 d in interleaved fashion.Symbols are allocated alternately in circular progression around thetag.

The interleaving is designed to maximise the average spatial distancebetween any two symbols of the same codeword.

In order to support “single-click” interaction with a tagged region viaa sensing device, the sensing device must be able to see at least oneentire tag in its field of view no matter where in the region or at whatorientation it is positioned. The required diameter of the field of viewof the sensing device is therefore a function of the size and spacing ofthe tags.

Assuming a circular tag shape, the minimum diameter of the sensor fieldof view is obtained when the tags are tiled on a equilateral triangulargrid, as shown in FIG. 5 b.

2.4 Tag Image Processing and Decoding

The tag image processing and decoding performed by a sensing device suchas the netpage pen is shown in FIG. 7. While a captured image is beingacquired from the image sensor, the dynamic range of the image isdetermined (at 20). The center of the range is then chosen as the binarythreshold for the image 21. The image is then thresholded and segmentedinto connected pixel regions (i.e. shapes 23) (at 22). Shapes which aretoo small to represent tag target structures are discarded. The size andcentroid of each shape is also computed.

Binary shape moments 25 are then computed (at 24) for each shape, andthese provide the basis for subsequently locating target structures.Central shape moments are by their nature invariant of position, and canbe easily made invariant of scale, aspect ratio and rotation.

The ring target structure 15 is the first to be located (at 26). A ringhas the advantage of being very well behaved when perspective-distorted.Matching proceeds by aspect-normalizing and rotation-normalizing eachshape's moments. Once its second-order moments are normalized the ringis easy to recognize even if the perspective distortion was significant.The ring's original aspect and rotation 27 together provide a usefulapproximation of the perspective transform.

The axis target structure 16 is the next to be located (at 28). Matchingproceeds by applying the ring's normalizations to each shape's moments,and rotation-normalizing the resulting moments. Once its second-ordermoments are normalized the axis target is easily recognized. Note thatone third order moment is required to disambiguate the two possibleorientations of the axis. The shape is deliberately skewed to one sideto make this possible. Note also that it is only possible torotation-normalize the axis target after it has had the ring'snormalizations applied, since the perspective distortion can hide theaxis target's axis. The axis target's original rotation provides auseful approximation of the tag's rotation due to pen yaw 29.

The four perspective target structures 17 are the last to be located (at30). Good estimates of their positions are computed based on their knownspatial relationships to the ring and axis targets, the aspect androtation of the ring, and the rotation of the axis. Matching proceeds byapplying the ring's normalizations to each shape's moments. Once theirsecond-order moments are normalized the circular perspective targets areeasy to recognize, and the target closest to each estimated position istaken as a match. The original centroids of the four perspective targetsare then taken to be the perspective-distorted corners 31 of a square ofknown size in tag space, and an eight-degree-of-freedom perspectivetransform 33 is inferred (at 32) based on solving the well-understoodequations relating the four tag-space and image-space point pairs (seeHeckbert, P., Fundamentals of Texture Mapping and Image Warping, MastersThesis, Dept. of EECS, U. of California at Berkeley, Technical ReportNo. UCB/CSD 89/516, June 1989, the contents of which are hereinincorporated by cross-reference).

The inferred tag-space to image-space perspective transform is used toproject (at 36) each known data bit position in tag space into imagespace where the real-valued position is used to bilinearly interpolate(at 36) the four relevant adjacent pixels in the input image. Thepreviously computed image threshold 21 is used to threshold the resultto produce the final bit value 37.

Once all 360 data bits 37 have been obtained in this way, each of thesix 60-bit Reed-Solomon codewords is decoded (at 38) to yield 20 decodedbits 39, or 120 decoded bits in total. Note that the codeword symbolsare sampled in codeword order, so that codewords are implicitlyde-interleaved during the sampling process.

The ring target 15 is only sought in a subarea of the image whoserelationship to the image guarantees that the ring, if found, is part ofa complete tag. If a complete tag is not found and successfully decoded,then no pen position is recorded for the current frame. Given adequateprocessing power and ideally a non-minimal field of view 193, analternative strategy involves seeking another tag in the current image.

The obtained tag data indicates the identity of the region containingthe tag and the position of the tag within the region. An accurateposition 35 of the pen nib in the region, as well as the overallorientation 35 of the pen, is then inferred (at 34) from the perspectivetransform 33 observed on the tag and the known spatial relationshipbetween the pen's physical axis and the pen's optical axis.

2.5 Alternative Tag Structures

The tag structure described above is designed to support the tagging ofnon-planar surfaces where a regular tiling of tags may not be possible.In the more usual case of planar surfaces where a regular tiling of tagsis possible, i.e. surfaces such as sheets of paper and the like, moreefficient tag structures can be used which exploit the regular nature ofthe tiling.

FIG. 6 a shows a square tag 4 with four perspective targets 17. It issimilar in structure to tags described by Bennett et al. in U.S. Pat.No. 5,051,746. The tag represents sixty 4-bit Reed-Solomon symbols 47,for a total of 240 bits. The tag represents each one bit as a dot 48,and each zero bit by the absence of the corresponding dot. Theperspective targets are designed to be shared between adjacent tags, asshown in FIGS. 6 b and 6 c. FIG. 6 b shows a square tiling of 16 tagsand the corresponding minimum field of view 193, which must span thediagonals of two tags. FIG. 6 c shows a square tiling of nine tags,containing all one bits for illustration purposes.

Using a (15, 7) Reed-Solomon code, 112 bits of tag data are redundantlyencoded to produce 240 encoded bits. The four codewords are interleavedspatially within the tag to maximize resilience to burst errors.Assuming a 16-bit tag ID as before, this allows a region ID of up to 92bits.

The data-bearing dots 48 of the tag are designed to not overlap theirneighbors, so that groups of tags cannot produce structures whichresemble targets. This also saves ink. The perspective targets thereforeallow detection of the tag, so further targets are not required. Tagimage processing proceeds as described in section 1.2.4 above, with theexception that steps 26 and 28 are omitted.

Although the tag may contain an orientation feature to allowdisambiguation of the four possible orientations of the tag relative tothe sensor, it is also possible to embed orientation data in the tagdata. For example, the four codewords can be arranged so that each tagorientation contains one codeword placed at that orientation, as shownin FIG. 6 d, where each symbol is labelled with the number of itscodeword (1-4) and the position of the symbol within the codeword (A-O).Tag decoding then consists of decoding one codeword at each orientation.Each codeword can either contain a single bit indicating whether it isthe first codeword, or two bits indicating which codeword it is. Thelatter approach has the advantage that if, say, the data content of onlyone codeword is required, then at most two codewords need to be decodedto obtain the desired data. This may be the case if the region ID is notexpected to change within a stroke and is thus only decoded at the startof a stroke. Within a stroke only the codeword containing the tag ID isthen desired. Furthermore, since the rotation of the sensing devicechanges slowly and predictably within a stroke, only one codewordtypically needs to be decoded per frame.

It is possible to dispense with perspective targets altogether andinstead rely on the data representation being self-registering. In thiscase each bit value (or multi-bit value) is typically represented by anexplicit glyph, i.e. no bit value is represented by the absence of aglyph. This ensures that the data grid is well-populated, and thusallows the grid to be reliably identified and its perspective distortiondetected and subsequently corrected during data sampling. To allow tagboundaries to be detected, each tag data must contain a marker pattern,and these must be redundantly encoded to allow reliable detection. Theoverhead of such marker patterns is similar to the overhead of explicitperspective targets. One such scheme uses dots positioned a variouspoints relative to grid vertices to represent different glyphs and hencedifferent multi-bit values (see Anoto Technology Description, AnotoApril 2000).

Additional tag structures are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,929,186(“Orientation-indicating machine-readable coded data”) filed by theapplicant or assignee of the present invention.

2.6 Tag Map

Decoding a tag results in a region ID, a tag ID, and a tag-relative pentransform. Before the tag ID and the tag-relative pen location can betranslated into an absolute location within the tagged region, thelocation of the tag within the region must be known. This is given by atag map, a function which maps each tag ID in a tagged region to acorresponding location. The tag map class diagram is shown in FIG. 22,as part of the netpage printer class diagram.

A tag map reflects the scheme used to tile the surface region with tags,and this can vary according to surface type. When multiple taggedregions share the same tiling scheme and the same tag numbering scheme,they can also share the same tag map.

The tag map for a region must be retrievable via the region ID. Thus,given a region ID, a tag ID and a pen transform, the tag map can beretrieved, the tag ID can be translated into an absolute tag locationwithin the region, and the tag-relative pen location can be added to thetag location to yield an absolute pen location within the region.

The tag ID may have a structure which assists translation through thetag map. It may, for example, encode cartesian (x-y) coordinates orpolar coordinates, depending on the surface type on which it appears.The tag ID structure is dictated by and known to the tag map, and tagIDs associated with different tag maps may therefore have differentstructures.

2.7 Tagging Schemes

The preferred coding scheme uses “location-indicating” tags as alreadydiscussed. An alternative coding scheme uses object-indicating tags.

A location-indicating tag contains a tag ID which, when translatedthrough the tag map associated with the tagged region, yields a uniquetag location within the region. The tag-relative location of the pen isadded to this tag location to yield the location of the pen within theregion. This in turn is used to determine the location of the penrelative to a user interface element in the page description associatedwith the region. Not only is the user interface element itselfidentified, but a location relative to the user interface element isidentified. Location-indicating tags therefore trivially support thecapture of an absolute pen path in the zone of a particular userinterface element.

An object-indicating tag contains a tag ID which directly identifies auser interface element in the page description associated with theregion. All the tags in the zone of the user interface element identifythe user interface element, making them all identical and thereforeindistinguishable. Object-indicating tags do not, therefore, support thecapture of an absolute pen path. They do, however, support the captureof a relative pen path. So long as the position sampling frequencyexceeds twice the encountered tag frequency, the displacement from onesampled pen position to the next within a stroke can be unambiguouslydetermined.

With either tagging scheme, the tags function in cooperation withassociated visual elements on the netpage as user interactive elementsin that a user can interact with the printed page using an appropriatesensing device in order for tag data to be read by the sensing deviceand for an appropriate response to be generated in the netpage system.

3 Document and Page Descriptions

A preferred embodiment of a document and page description class diagramis shown in FIGS. 12 and 13.

In the netpage system a document is described at three levels. At themost abstract level the document 836 has a hierarchical structure whoseterminal elements 839 are associated with content objects 840 such astext objects, text style objects, image objects, etc. Once the documentis printed on a printer with a particular page size, the document ispaginated and otherwise formatted. Formatted terminal elements 835 willin some cases be associated with content objects which are differentfrom those associated with their corresponding terminal elements,particularly where the content objects are style-related. Each printedinstance of a document and page is also described separately, to allowinput captured through a particular page instance 830 to be recordedseparately from input captured through other instances of the same pagedescription.

The presence of the most abstract document description on the pageserver allows a copy of a document to be printed without being forced toaccept the source document's specific format. The user or a printingpress may be requesting a copy for a printer with a different page size,for example. Conversely, the presence of the formatted documentdescription on the page server allows the page server to efficientlyinterpret user actions on a particular printed page.

A formatted document 834 consists of a set of formatted pagedescriptions 5, each of which consists of a set of formatted terminalelements 835. Each formatted element has a spatial extent or zone 58 onthe page. This defines the active area of input elements such ashyperlinks and input fields.

A document instance 831 corresponds to a formatted document 834. Itconsists of a set of page instances 830, each of which corresponds to apage description 5 of the formatted document. Each page instance 830describes a single unique printed netpage 1, and records the page ID 50of the netpage. A page instance is not part of a document instance if itrepresents a copy of a page requested in isolation.

A page instance consists of a set of terminal element instances 832. Anelement instance only exists if it records instance-specificinformation. Thus, a hyperlink instance exists for a hyperlink elementbecause it records a transaction ID 55 which is specific to the pageinstance, and a field instance exists for a field element because itrecords input specific to the page instance. An element instance doesnot exist, however, for static elements such as textflows.

A terminal element 839 can be a visual element or an input element. Avisual element can be a static element 843 or a dynamic element 846. Aninput element can be a hyperlink element 844 or a field element 845, asshown in FIG. 14. A static element 843 can be a style element 847 withan associated style object 854, a textflow element 848 with anassociated styled text object 855, an image element 849 with anassociated image element 856, a graphic element 850 with an associatedgraphic object 857, a video clip element 851 with an associated videoclip object 858, an audio clip element 852 with an associated audio clipobject 859, or a script element 853 with an associated script object860, as shown in FIG. 15.

A page instance has a background field 833 which is used to record anydigital ink captured on the page which does not apply to a specificinput element.

In the preferred form of the invention, a tag map 811 is associated witheach page instance to allow tags on the page to be translated intolocations on the page.

4 The Netpage Network

In a preferred embodiment, a netpage network consists of a distributedset of netpage page servers 10, netpage registration servers 11, netpageID servers 12, netpage application servers 13, and netpage relay devices601 connected via a network 19 such as the Internet, as shown in FIG. 3.

The netpage registration server 11 is a server which recordsrelationships between users, pens, printers and applications, andthereby authorizes various network activities. It authenticates usersand acts as a signing proxy on behalf of authenticated users inapplication transactions. It also provides handwriting recognitionservices. As described above, a netpage page server 10 maintainspersistent information about page descriptions and page instances. Thenetpage network includes any number of page servers, each handling asubset of page instances. Since a page server also maintains user inputvalues for each page instance, clients such as netpage relays 601 sendnetpage input directly to the appropriate page server. The page serverinterprets any such input relative to the description of thecorresponding page.

A netpage ID server 12 allocates document IDs 51 on demand, and providesload-balancing of page servers via its ID allocation scheme.

A netpage relay uses the Internet Distributed Name System (DNS), orsimilar, to resolve a netpage page ID 50 into the network address of thenetpage page server handling the corresponding page instance.

A netpage application server 13 is a server which hosts interactivenetpage applications.

Netpage servers can be hosted on a variety of network server platformsfrom manufacturers such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun. Multiplenetpage servers can run concurrently on a single host, and a singleserver can be distributed over a number of hosts. Some or all of thefunctionality provided by netpage servers, and in particular thefunctionality provided by the ID server and the page server, can also beprovided directly in a netpage appliance such as a netpage printer, in acomputer workstation, or on a local network.

4 The Netpage Pen

The active sensing device of the netpage system may take the form of aclicker (for clicking on a specific position on a surface), a pointerhaving a stylus (for pointing or gesturing on a surface using pointerstrokes), or a pen having a marking nib (for marking a surface with inkwhen pointing, gesturing or writing on the surface). A pen 101 isdescribed herein, although it will be appreciated that clickers andpointers may be of similar construction. The pen 101 uses its embeddedcontroller 134 to capture and decode netpage tags from a page via animage sensor. The image sensor is a solid-state device provided with anappropriate filter to permit sensing at only near-infrared wavelengths.As described in more detail below, the system is able to sense when thenib is in contact with the surface, and the pen is able to sense tags ata sufficient rate to capture human handwriting (i.e. at 200 dpi orgreater and 100 Hz or faster). Information captured by the pen may beencrypted and wirelessly transmitted to the printer (or base station),the printer or base station interpreting the data with respect to the(known) page structure.

The preferred embodiment of the netpage pen 101 operates both as anormal marking ink pen and as a non-marking stylus (i.e. as a pointer).The marking aspect, however, is not necessary for using the netpagesystem as a browsing system, such as when it is used as an Internetinterface. Each netpage pen is registered with the netpage system andhas a unique pen ID 61. FIG. 11 shows the netpage pen class diagram,reflecting pen-related information maintained by a registration server11 on the netpage network.

When the nib is in contact with a netpage, the pen determines itsposition and orientation relative to the page. The nib is attached to aforce sensor, and the force on the nib is interpreted relative to athreshold to indicate whether the pen is “up” or “down”. This allows ainteractive element on the page to be ‘clicked’ by pressing with the pennib, in order to request, say, information from a network. Furthermore,the force is captured as a continuous value to allow, say, the fulldynamics of a signature to be verified.

The pen determines the position and orientation of its nib on thenetpage by imaging, in the infrared spectrum, an area 193 of the page inthe vicinity of the nib. It decodes the nearest tag and computes theposition of the nib relative to the tag from the observed perspectivedistortion on the imaged tag and the known geometry of the pen optics.Although the position resolution of the tag may be low, because the tagdensity on the page is inversely proportional to the tag size, theadjusted position resolution is quite high, exceeding the minimumresolution required for accurate handwriting recognition.

Pen actions relative to a netpage are captured as a series of strokes. Astroke consists of a sequence of time-stamped pen positions on the page,initiated by a pen-down event and completed by the subsequent pen-upevent. A stroke is also tagged with the page ID 50 of the netpagewhenever the page ID changes, which, under normal circumstances, is atthe commencement of the stroke.

Each netpage pen has a current selection 826 associated with it,allowing the user to perform copy and paste operations etc. Theselection is timestamped to allow the system to discard it after adefined time period. The current selection describes a region of a pageinstance. It consists of the most recent digital ink stroke capturedthrough the pen relative to the background area of the page. It isinterpreted in an application-specific manner once it is submitted to anapplication via a selection hyperlink activation.

Each pen has a current nib 824. This is the nib last notified by the pento the system. In the case of the default netpage pen described above,either the marking black ink nib or the non-marking stylus nib iscurrent. Each pen also has a current nib style 825. This is the nibstyle last associated with the pen by an application, e.g. in responseto the user selecting a color from a palette. The default nib style isthe nib style associated with the current nib. Strokes captured througha pen are tagged with the current nib style. When the strokes aresubsequently reproduced, they are reproduced in the nib style with whichthey are tagged.

The pen 101 may have one or more buttons 209, which are pressed by theuser to select a mode of the pen. As described in Section 9.3 below, thebutton(s) are used to determine a behavior of the pen, which, in turn,determines how a stroke is interpreted by the page server 10.

Whenever the pen is within range of a relay device 601 with which it cancommunicate, the pen slowly flashes its “online” LED. When the pen failsto decode a stroke relative to the page, it momentarily activates its“error” LED. When the pen succeeds in decoding a stroke relative to thepage, it momentarily activates its “ok” LED.

A sequence of captured strokes is referred to as digital ink. Digitalink forms the basis for the digital exchange of drawings andhandwriting, for online recognition of handwriting, and for onlineverification of signatures.

The pen is wireless and transmits digital ink to the relay device 601via a short-range radio link. The transmitted digital ink is encryptedfor privacy and security and packetized for efficient transmission, butis always flushed on a pen-up event to ensure timely handling in theprinter.

When the pen is out-of-range of a relay device 601 it buffers digitalink in internal memory, which has a capacity of over ten minutes ofcontinuous handwriting. When the pen is once again within range of arelay device, it transfers any buffered digital ink.

A pen can be registered with any number of relay devices, but becauseall state data resides in netpages both on paper and on the network, itis largely immaterial which relay device a pen is communicating with atany particular time.

One embodiment of the pen is described in greater detail in Section 7below, with reference to FIGS. 8 to 10.

6 Netpage Interaction

The netpage relay device 601 receives data relating to a stroke from thepen 101 when the pen is used to interact with a netpage 1. The codeddata 3 of the tags 4 is read by the pen when it is used to execute amovement, such as a stroke. The data allows the identity of theparticular page to be determined and an indication of the positioning ofthe pen relative to the page to be obtained. Interaction data comprisingthe page ID 50 and at least one position of the pen, is transmitted tothe relay device 601, where it resolves, via the DNS, the page ID 50 ofthe stroke into the network address of the netpage page server 10 whichmaintains the corresponding page instance 830. It then transmits thestroke to the page server. If the page was recently identified in anearlier stroke, then the relay device may already have the address ofthe relevant page server in its cache. Each netpage consists of acompact page layout maintained persistently by a netpage page server(see below). The page layout refers to objects such as images, fonts andpieces of text, typically stored elsewhere on the netpage network.

When the page server receives the stroke from the pen, it retrieves thepage description to which the stroke applies, and determines whichelement of the page description the stroke intersects. It is then ableto interpret the stroke in the context of the type of the relevantelement.

A “click” is a stroke where the distance and time between the pen downposition and the subsequent pen up position are both less than somesmall maximum. An object which is activated by a click typicallyrequires a click to be activated, and accordingly, a longer stroke isignored. The failure of a pen action, such as a “sloppy” click, toregister may be indicated by the lack of response from the pen's “ok”LED.

There are two kinds of input elements in a netpage page description:hyperlinks and form fields. Input through a form field can also triggerthe activation of an associated hyperlink.

6.1 Hyperlinks

A hyperlink is a means of sending a message to a remote application, andtypically elicits a displayed or printed response in the netpage system.

A hyperlink element 844 identifies the application 71 which handlesactivation of the hyperlink, a link ID 54 which identifies the hyperlinkto the application, an “alias required” flag which asks the system toinclude the user's application alias ID 65 in the hyperlink activation,and a description which is used when the hyperlink is recorded as afavorite or appears in the user's history. The hyperlink element classdiagram is shown in FIG. 16.

When a hyperlink is activated, the page server sends a request to anapplication somewhere on the network. The application is identified byan application ID 64, and the application ID is resolved in the normalway via the DNS. There are three types of hyperlinks: general hyperlinks863, form hyperlinks 865, and selection hyperlinks 864, as shown in FIG.17. A general hyperlink can implement a request for a linked document,or may simply signal a preference to a server. A form hyperlink submitsthe corresponding form to the application. A selection hyperlink submitsthe current selection to the application. If the current selectioncontains a single-word piece of text, for example, the application mayreturn a single-page document giving the word's meaning within thecontext in which it appears, or a translation into a different language.Each hyperlink type is characterized by what information is submitted tothe application.

The corresponding hyperlink instance 862 records a transaction ID 55which can be specific to the page instance on which the hyperlinkinstance appears. The transaction ID can identify user-specific data tothe application, for example a “shopping cart” of pending purchasesmaintained by a purchasing application on behalf of the user.

The system includes the pen's current selection 826 in a selectionhyperlink activation. The system includes the content of the associatedform instance 868 in a form hyperlink activation, although if thehyperlink has its “submit delta” attribute set, only input since thelast form submission is included. The system includes an effectivereturn path in all hyperlink activations.

A hyperlinked group 866 is a group element 838 which has an associatedhyperlink, as shown in FIG. 18. When input occurs through any fieldelement in the group, the hyperlink 844 associated with the group isactivated. A hyperlinked group can be used to associate hyperlinkbehavior with a field such as a checkbox. It can also be used, inconjunction with the “submit delta” attribute of a form hyperlink, toprovide continuous input to an application. It can therefore be used tosupport a “blackboard” interaction model, i.e. where input is capturedand therefore shared as soon as it occurs.

6.2 Hyperlink Activation Protocol

A preferred embodiment of a hyperlink activation protocol is shown inFIG. 42.

When a user clicks on a netpage with a netpage pen, the pen communicatesthe click, in the form of interaction data, to the nearest netpage relaydevice 601. The click identifies the page and a location on the page.The relay device 601 already knows the ID 61 of the pen from the penconnection protocol.

The relay device 601 determines, via the DNS, the network address of thepage server 10 handling the particular page ID 50. The address mayalready be in its cache if the user has recently interacted with thesame page. The relay device 601 then forwards the pen ID, its own deviceID 62, the page ID and click location to the page server.

The page server loads the page description 5 identified by the page IDand determines which input element's zone 58, if any, the click lies in.Assuming the relevant input element is a hyperlink element 844, the pageserver then obtains the associated application ID 64 and link ID 54, anddetermines, via the DNS, the network address of the application serverhosting the application 71.

The page server uses the pen ID 61 to obtain the corresponding user ID60 from the registration server 11, and then allocates a globally uniquehyperlink request ID 52 and builds a hyperlink request 934. Thehyperlink request class diagram is shown in FIG. 26. The hyperlinkrequest records the IDs of the requesting user and relay device, andidentifies the clicked hyperlink instance 862. The page server thensends its own server ID 53, the hyperlink request ID, and the link ID tothe application.

The application produces a response document according toapplication-specific logic, and obtains a document ID 51 from an IDserver 12. It then sends the document to the page server 10 bresponsible for the document's newly allocated ID, together with therequesting page server's ID and the hyperlink request ID.

The second page server sends the hyperlink request ID and application IDto the first page server to obtain the corresponding user ID and deviceID 62. The first page server rejects the request if the hyperlinkrequest has expired or is for a different application.

The second page server allocates document instance and page IDs 50,returns the newly allocated page IDs to the application, adds thecomplete document to its own database, and finally sends the pagedescriptions to the requesting relay device.

The hyperlink instance may include a meaningful transaction ID 55, inwhich case the first page server includes the transaction ID in themessage sent to the application. This allows the application toestablish a transaction-specific context for the hyperlink activation.

If the hyperlink requires a user alias, i.e. its “alias required”attribute is set, then the first page server sends both the pen ID 61and the hyperlink's application ID 64 to the registration server 11 toobtain not just the user ID corresponding to the pen ID but also thealias ID 65 corresponding to the application ID and the user ID. Itincludes the alias ID in the message sent to the application, allowingthe application to establish a user-specific context for the hyperlinkactivation.

6.3 Forms

A form defines a collection of related input fields used to capture arelated set of inputs through a printed netpage. A form allows a user tosubmit one or more parameters to an application software program runningon a server.

A form 867 is a group element 838 in the document hierarchy. Itultimately contains a set of terminal field elements 839. A forminstance 868 represents a printed instance of a form. It consists of aset of field instances 870 which correspond to the field elements 845 ofthe form. Each field instance has an associated value 871, whose typedepends on the type of the corresponding field element. Each field valuerecords input through a particular printed form instance, i.e. throughone or more printed netpages. The form class diagram is shown in FIG.19.

Each form instance has a status 872 which indicates whether the form isactive, frozen, submitted, void or expired. A form is active when firstprinted. A form becomes frozen once it is signed or once its freeze timeis reached. A form becomes submitted once one of its submissionhyperlinks has been activated, unless the hyperlink has its “submitdelta” attribute set. A form becomes void when the user invokes a voidform, reset form or duplicate form page command A form expires when itsspecified expiry time is reached, i.e. when the time the form has beenactive exceeds the form's specified lifetime. While the form is active,form input is allowed. Input through a form which is not active isinstead captured in the background field 833 of the relevant pageinstance. When the form is active or frozen, form submission is allowed.Any attempt to submit a form when the form is not active or frozen isrejected, and instead elicits an form status report.

Each form instance is associated (at 59) with any form instances derivedfrom it, thus providing a version history. This allows all but thelatest version of a form in a particular time period to be excluded froma search.

All input is captured as digital ink. Digital ink 873 consists of a setof timestamped stroke groups 874, each of which consists of a set ofstyled strokes 875. Each stroke consists of a set of timestamped penpositions 876, each of which also includes pen orientation and nibforce. The digital ink class diagram is shown in FIG. 20.

A field element 845 can be a checkbox field 877, a text field 878, adrawing field 879, or a signature field 880. The field element classdiagram is shown in FIG. 21. Any digital ink captured in a field's zone58 is assigned to the field.

A checkbox field has an associated boolean value 881, as shown in FIG.22. Any mark (a tick, a cross, a stroke, a fill zigzag, etc.) capturedin a checkbox field's zone causes a true value to be assigned to thefield's value.

A text field has an associated text value 882, as shown in FIG. 23. Anydigital ink captured in a text field's zone is automatically convertedto text via online handwriting recognition, and the text is assigned tothe field's value. Online handwriting recognition is well-understood(see, for example, Tappert, C., C. Y. Suen and T. Wakahara, “The Stateof the Art in On-Line Handwriting Recognition”, IEEE Transactions onPattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 12, No. 8, August 1990,the contents of which are herein incorporated by cross-reference).

A signature field has an associated digital signature value 883, asshown in FIG. 24. Any digital ink captured in a signature field's zoneis automatically verified with respect to the identity of the owner ofthe pen, and a digital signature of the content of the form of which thefield is part is generated and assigned to the field's value. Thedigital signature is generated using the pen user's private signaturekey specific to the application which owns the form. Online signatureverification is well-understood (see, for example, Plamondon, R. and G.Lorette, “Automatic Signature Verification and Writer Identification—TheState of the Art”, Pattern Recognition, Vol. 22, No. 2, 1989, thecontents of which are herein incorporated by cross-reference).

A field element is hidden if its “hidden” attribute is set. A hiddenfield element does not have an input zone on a page and does not acceptinput. It can have an associated field value which is included in theform data when the form containing the field is submitted.

“Editing” commands, such as strike-throughs indicating deletion, canalso be recognized in form fields.

Because the handwriting recognition algorithm works “online” (i.e. withaccess to the dynamics of the pen movement), rather than “offline” (i.e.with access only to a bitmap of pen markings), it can recognize run-ondiscretely-written characters with relatively high accuracy, without awriter-dependent training phase. A writer-dependent model of handwritingis automatically generated over time, however, and can be generatedup-front if necessary,

Digital ink, as already stated, consists of a sequence of strokes. Anystroke which starts in a particular element's zone is appended to thatelement's digital ink stream, ready for interpretation. Any stroke notappended to an object's digital ink stream is appended to the backgroundfield's digital ink stream.

Digital ink captured in the background field is interpreted as aselection gesture. Circumscription of one or more objects is generallyinterpreted as a selection of the circumscribed objects, although theactual interpretation is application-specific.

Table 2 summarises some typical pen interactions with a netpage.

TABLE 2 Summary of typical pen interactions with a netpage Object TypePen input Action Hyperlink General Click Submit action to applicationForm Click Submit form to application Selection Click Submit selectionto application Form Checkbox Any mark Assign true to field field TextHandwriting Convert digital ink to text; assign text to field DrawingDigital ink Assign digital ink to field Signature Signature Verifydigital ink signature; generate digital signature of form; assigndigital signature to field None — Circum- Assign digital ink to currentscription selection

The system maintains a current selection for each pen. The selectionconsists simply of the most recent stroke captured in the backgroundfield. The selection is cleared after an inactivity timeout to ensurepredictable behavior.

The raw digital ink captured in every field is retained on the netpagepage server and is optionally transmitted with the form data when theform is submitted to the application. This allows the application tointerrogate the raw digital ink should it suspect the originalconversion, such as the conversion of handwritten text. This can, forexample, involve human intervention at the application level for formswhich fail certain application-specific consistency checks. As anextension to this, the entire background area of a form can bedesignated as a drawing field. The application can then decide, on thebasis of the presence of digital ink outside the explicit fields of theform, to route the form to a human operator, on the assumption that theuser may have indicated amendments to the filled-in fields outside ofthose fields.

FIG. 25 shows a flowchart of the process of handling pen input relativeto a netpage. The process consists of receiving (at 884) a stroke fromthe pen; identifying (at 885) the page instance 830 to which the page ID50 in the stroke refers; retrieving (at 886) the page description 5;identifying (at 887) a formatted element 839 whose zone 58 the strokeintersects; determining (at 888) whether the formatted elementcorresponds to a field element, and if so appending (at 892) thereceived stroke to the digital ink of the field value 871, interpreting(at 893) the accumulated digital ink of the field, and determining (at894) whether the field is part of a hyperlinked group 866 and if soactivating (at 895) the associated hyperlink; alternatively determining(at 889) whether the formatted element corresponds to a hyperlinkelement and if so activating (at 895) the corresponding hyperlink;alternatively, in the absence of an input field or hyperlink, appending(at 890) the received stroke to the digital ink of the background field833; and copying (at 891) the received stroke to the current selection826 of the current pen, as maintained by the registration server.

FIG. 25 a shows a detailed flowchart of step 893 in the process shown inFIG. 25, where the accumulated digital ink of a field is interpretedaccording to the type of the field. The process consists of determining(at 896) whether the field is a checkbox and (at 897) whether thedigital ink represents a checkmark, and if so assigning (at 898) a truevalue to the field value; alternatively determining (at 899) whether thefield is a text field and if so converting (at 900) the digital ink tocomputer text, with the help of the appropriate registration server, andassigning (at 901) the converted computer text to the field value;alternatively determining (at 902) whether the field is a signaturefield and if so verifying (at 903) the digital ink as the signature ofthe pen's owner, with the help of the appropriate registration server,creating (at 904) a digital signature of the contents of thecorresponding form, also with the help of the registration server andusing the pen owner's private signature key relating to thecorresponding application, and assigning (at 905) the digital signatureto the field value.

7 Netpage Pen and Printer Description 7.1 Pen Mechanics

Referring to FIGS. 8 and 9, the pen, generally designated by referencenumeral 101, includes a housing 102 in the form of a plastics mouldinghaving walls 103 defining an interior space 104 for mounting the pencomponents. Mode selector buttons 209 are provided on the housing 102.The pen top 105 is in operation rotatably mounted at one end 106 of thehousing 102. A semi-transparent cover 107 is secured to the opposite end108 of the housing 102. The cover 107 is also of moulded plastics, andis formed from semi-transparent material in order to enable the user toview the status of the LED mounted within the housing 102. The cover 107includes a main part 109 which substantially surrounds the end 108 ofthe housing 102 and a projecting portion 110 which projects back fromthe main part 109 and fits within a corresponding slot 111 formed in thewalls 103 of the housing 102. A radio antenna 112 is mounted behind theprojecting portion 110, within the housing 102. Screw threads 113surrounding an aperture 113A on the cover 107 are arranged to receive ametal end piece 114, including corresponding screw threads 115. Themetal end piece 114 is removable to enable ink cartridge replacement.

Also mounted within the cover 107 is a tri-color status LED 116 on aflex PCB 117. The antenna 112 is also mounted on the flex PCB 117. Thestatus LED 116 is mounted at the top of the pen 101 for good all-aroundvisibility.

The pen can operate both as a normal marking ink pen and as anon-marking stylus. An ink pen cartridge 118 with nib 119 and a stylus120 with stylus nib 121 are mounted side by side within the housing 102.Either the ink cartridge nib 119 or the stylus nib 121 can be broughtforward through open end 122 of the metal end piece 114, by rotation ofthe pen top 105. Respective slider blocks 123 and 124 are mounted to theink cartridge 118 and stylus 120, respectively. A rotatable cam barrel125 is secured to the pen top 105 in operation and arranged to rotatetherewith. The cam barrel 125 includes a cam 126 in the form of a slotwithin the walls 181 of the cam barrel. Cam followers 127 and 128projecting from slider blocks 123 and 124 fit within the cam slot 126.On rotation of the cam barrel 125, the slider blocks 123 or 124 moverelative to each other to project either the pen nib 119 or stylus nib121 out through the hole 122 in the metal end piece 114. The pen 101 hasthree states of operation. By turning the top 105 through 90° steps, thethree states are:

-   -   Stylus 120 nib 121 out;    -   Ink cartridge 118 nib 119 out; and    -   Neither ink cartridge 118 nib 119 out nor stylus 120 nib 121        out.

A second flex PCB 129, is mounted on an electronics chassis 130 whichsits within the housing 102. The second flex PCB 129 mounts an infraredLED 131 for providing infrared radiation for projection onto thesurface. An image sensor 132 is provided mounted on the second flex PCB129 for receiving reflected radiation from the surface. The second flexPCB 129 also mounts a radio frequency chip 133, which includes an RFtransmitter and RF receiver, and a controller chip 134 for controllingoperation of the pen 101. An optics block 135 (formed from moulded clearplastics) sits within the cover 107 and projects an infrared beam ontothe surface and receives images onto the image sensor 132. Power supplywires 136 connect the components on the second flex PCB 129 to batterycontacts 137 which are mounted within the cam barrel 125. A terminal 138connects to the battery contacts 137 and the cam barrel 125. A threevolt rechargeable battery 139 sits within the cam barrel 125 in contactwith the battery contacts. An induction charging coil 140 is mountedabout the second flex PCB 129 to enable recharging of the battery 139via induction. The second flex PCB 129 also mounts an infrared LED 143and infrared photodiode 144 for detecting displacement in the cam barrel125 when either the stylus 120 or the ink cartridge 118 is used forwriting, in order to enable a determination of the force being appliedto the surface by the pen nib 119 or stylus nib 121. The IR photodiode144 detects light from the IR LED 143 via reflectors (not shown) mountedon the slider blocks 123 and 124.

Rubber grip pads 141 and 142 are provided towards the end 108 of thehousing 102 to assist gripping the pen 101, and top 105 also includes aclip 142 for clipping the pen 101 to a pocket.

7.2 Pen Controller

The pen 101 is arranged to determine the position of its nib (stylus nib121 or ink cartridge nib 119) by imaging, in the infrared spectrum, anarea of the surface in the vicinity of the nib. It records the locationdata from the nearest location tag, and is arranged to calculate thedistance of the nib 121 or 119 from the location tab utilising optics135 and controller chip 134. The controller chip 134 calculates theorientation of the pen and the nib-to-tag distance from the perspectivedistortion observed on the imaged tag.

Utilising the RF chip 133 and antenna 112 the pen 101 can transmit thedigital ink data (which is encrypted for security and packaged forefficient transmission) to the computing system.

When the pen is in range of a relay device 601, the digital ink data istransmitted as it is formed. When the pen 101 moves out of range,digital ink data is buffered within the pen 101 (the pen 101 circuitryincludes a buffer arranged to store digital ink data for approximately12 minutes of the pen motion on the surface) and can be transmittedlater.

In Applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 6,870,966, the contents of which isincorporated herein by reference, a pen 101 having an interchangeableink cartridge nib and stylus nib was described. Accordingly, andreferring to FIG. 27, when the pen 101 connects to the computing system,the controller 134 notifies the system of the pen ID, nib ID 175,current absolute time 176, and the last absolute time it obtained fromthe system prior to going offline. The pen ID allows the computingsystem to identify the pen when there is more than one pen beingoperated with the computing system.

The nib ID allows the computing system to identify which nib (stylus nib121 or ink cartridge nib 119) is presently being used. The computingsystem can vary its operation depending upon which nib is being used.For example, if the ink cartridge nib 119 is being used the computingsystem may defer producing feedback output because immediate feedback isprovided by the ink markings made on the surface. Where the stylus nib121 is being used, the computing system may produce immediate feedbackoutput.

Since a user may change the nib 119, 121 between one stroke and thenext, the pen 101 optionally records a nib ID for a stroke 175. Thisbecomes the nib ID implicitly associated with later strokes.

Cartridges having particular nib characteristics may be interchangeablein the pen. The pen controller 134 may interrogate a cartridge to obtainthe nib ID 175 of the cartridge. The nib ID 175 may be stored in a ROMor a barcode on the cartridge. The controller 134 notifies the system ofthe nib ID whenever it changes. The system is thereby able to determinethe characteristics of the nib used to produce a stroke 175, and isthereby subsequently able to reproduce the characteristics of the strokeitself.

The controller chip 134 is mounted on the second flex PCB 129 in the pen101. FIG. 10 is a block diagram illustrating in more detail thearchitecture of the controller chip 134. FIG. 10 also showsrepresentations of the RF chip 133, the image sensor 132, the tri-colorstatus LED 116, the IR illumination LED 131, the IR force sensor LED143, and the force sensor photodiode 144.

The pen controller chip 134 includes a controlling processor 145. Bus146 enables the exchange of data between components of the controllerchip 134. Flash memory 147 and a 512 KB DRAM 148 are also included. Ananalog-to-digital converter 149 is arranged to convert the analog signalfrom the force sensor photodiode 144 to a digital signal.

An image sensor interface 152 interfaces with the image sensor 132. Atransceiver controller 153 and base band circuit 154 are also includedto interface with the RF chip 133 which includes an RF circuit 155 andRF resonators and inductors 156 connected to the antenna 112.

The controlling processor 145 captures and decodes location data fromtags from the surface via the image sensor 132, monitors the forcesensor photodiode 144, controls the LEDs 116, 131 and 143, and handlesshort-range radio communication via the radio transceiver 153. It is amedium-performance (˜40 MHz) general-purpose RISC processor.

The processor 145, digital transceiver components (transceivercontroller 153 and baseband circuit 154), image sensor interface 152,flash memory 147 and 512 KB DRAM 148 are integrated in a singlecontroller ASIC. Analog RF components (RF circuit 155 and RF resonatorsand inductors 156) are provided in the separate RF chip.

The image sensor is a 215×215 pixel CCD (such a sensor is produced byMatsushita Electronic Corporation, and is described in a paper byItakura, K T Nobusada, N Okusenya, R Nagayoshi, and M Ozaki, “A 1 mm 50k-Pixel IT CCD Image Sensor for Miniature Camera System”, IEEETransactions on Electronic Devices, Volt 47, number 1, January 2000,which is incorporated herein by reference) with an IR filter.

The controller ASIC 134 enters a quiescent state after a period ofinactivity when the pen 101 is not in contact with a surface. Itincorporates a dedicated circuit 150 which monitors the force sensorphotodiode 144 and wakes up the controller 134 via the power manager 151on a pen-down event.

The radio transceiver communicates in the unlicensed 900 MHz bandnormally used by cordless telephones, or alternatively in the unlicensed2.4 GHz industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band, and usesfrequency hopping and collision detection to provide interference-freecommunication.

In an alternative embodiment, the pen incorporates an Infrared DataAssociation (IrDA) interface for short-range communication with a basestation or netpage printer.

In a further embodiment, the pen 101 includes a pair of orthogonalaccelerometers mounted in the normal plane of the pen 101 axis. Theaccelerometers 190 are shown in FIGS. 9 and 10 in ghost outline.

The provision of the accelerometers enables this embodiment of the pen101 to sense motion without reference to surface location tags, allowingthe location tags to be sampled at a lower rate. Each location tag IDcan then identify an object of interest rather than a position on thesurface. For example, if the object is a user interface input element(e.g. a command button), then the tag ID of each location tag within thearea of the input element can directly identify the input element.

The acceleration measured by the accelerometers in each of the x and ydirections is integrated with respect to time to produce aninstantaneous velocity and position.

Since the starting position of the stroke is not known, only relativepositions within a stroke are calculated. Although position integrationaccumulates errors in the sensed acceleration, accelerometers typicallyhave high resolution, and the time duration of a stroke, over whicherrors accumulate, is short.

7.3 The Netpage Printer

The netpage printer 601 b is an appliance which is registered with thenetpage system and prints netpage documents on demand and viasubscription. Each printer has a unique printer ID 62, and is connectedto the netpage network via a network such as the Internet, ideally via abroadband connection.

Apart from identity and security settings in non-volatile memory, thenetpage printer contains no persistent storage. As far as a user isconcerned, “the network is the computer”. Netpages functioninteractively across space and time with the help of the distributednetpage page servers 10, independently of particular netpage printers.

The netpage printer receives subscribed netpage documents from netpagepublication servers 14. Each document is distributed in two parts: thepage layouts, and the actual text and image objects which populate thepages. Because of personalization, page layouts are typically specificto a particular subscriber and so are pointcast to the subscriber'sprinter via the appropriate page server. Text and image objects, on theother hand, are typically shared with other subscribers, and so aremulticast to all subscribers' printers and the appropriate page servers.

The netpage publication server optimizes the segmentation of documentcontent into pointcasts and multicasts. After receiving the pointcast ofa document's page layouts, the printer knows which multicasts, if any,to listen to.

Once the printer has received the complete page layouts and objects thatdefine the document to be printed, it can print the document.

The printer rasterizes and prints odd and even pages simultaneously onboth sides of the sheet. It contains duplexed print engine controllers760 and print engines utilizing Memjet™ printheads 350 for this purpose.

The printing process consists of two decoupled stages: rasterization ofpage descriptions, and expansion and printing of page images. The rasterimage processor (RIP) consists of one or more standard DSPs 757 runningin parallel. The duplexed print engine controllers consist of customprocessors which expand, dither and print page images in real time,synchronized with the operation of the printheads in the print engines.

Printers not enabled for IR printing have the option to print tags usingIR-absorptive black ink, although this restricts tags to otherwise emptyareas of the page. Although such pages have more limited functionalitythan IR-printed pages, they are still classed as netpages.

A normal netpage printer prints netpages on sheets of paper. Morespecialised netpage printers may print onto more specialised surfaces,such as globes. Each printer supports at least one surface type, andsupports at least one tag tiling scheme, and hence tag map, for eachsurface type. The tag map 811 which describes the tag tiling schemeactually used to print a document becomes associated with that documentso that the document's tags can be correctly interpreted.

7.4 Printer Controller Architecture

The netpage printer controller consists of a controlling processor 750,a factory-installed or field-installed network interface module 625, aradio transceiver (transceiver controller 753, baseband circuit 754, RFcircuit 755, and RF resonators and inductors 756), dual raster imageprocessor (RIP) DSPs 757, duplexed print engine controllers 760 a and760 b, flash memory 658, and 64 MB of DRAM 657, as illustrated in FIG.28.

The controlling processor handles communication with the network 19 andwith local wireless netpage pens 101, senses the help button 617,controls the user interface LEDs 613-616, and feeds and synchronizes theRIP DSPs 757 and print engine controllers 760. It consists of amedium-performance general-purpose microprocessor. The controllingprocessor 750 communicates with the print engine controllers 760 via ahigh-speed serial bus 659.

The RIP DSPs rasterize and compress page descriptions to the netpageprinter's compressed page format. Each print engine controller expands,dithers and prints page images to its associated Memjet™ printhead 350in real time (i.e. at over 30 pages per minute). The duplexed printengine controllers print both sides of a sheet simultaneously.

The master print engine controller 760 a controls the paper transportand monitors ink usage in conjunction with the master QA chip 665 andthe ink cartridge QA chip 761.

The printer controller's flash memory 658 holds the software for boththe processor 750 and the DSPs 757, as well as configuration data. Thisis copied to main memory 657 at boot time.

The processor 750, DSPs 757, and digital transceiver components(transceiver controller 753 and baseband circuit 754) are integrated ina single controller ASIC 656. Analog RF components (RF circuit 755 andRF resonators and inductors 756) are provided in a separate RF chip 762.The network interface module 625 is separate, since netpage printersallow the network connection to be factory-selected or field-selected.Flash memory 658 and the 2×256 Mbit (64 MB) DRAM 657 is also off-chip.The print engine controllers 760 are provided in separate ASICs.

A variety of network interface modules 625 are provided, each providinga netpage network interface 751 and optionally a local computer ornetwork interface 752. Netpage network Internet interfaces include POTSmodems, Hybrid Fiber-Coax (HFC) cable modems, ISDN modems, DSL modems,satellite transceivers, current and next-generation cellular telephonetransceivers, and wireless local loop (WLL) transceivers. Localinterfaces include IEEE 1284 (parallel port), 10Base-T and 100Base-TEthernet, USB and USB 2.0, IEEE 1394 (Firewire), and various emerginghome networking interfaces. If an Internet connection is available onthe local network, then the local network interface can be used as thenetpage network interface.

The radio transceiver 753 communicates in the unlicensed 900 MHz bandnormally used by cordless telephones, or alternatively in the unlicensed2.4 GHz industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band, and usesfrequency hopping and collision detection to provide interference-freecommunication.

The printer controller optionally incorporates an Infrared DataAssociation (IrDA) interface for receiving data “squirted” from devicessuch as netpage cameras. In an alternative embodiment, the printer usesthe IrDA interface for short-range communication with suitablyconfigured netpage pens.

7.4.1 Rasterization and Printing

Once the main processor 750 has received and verified the document'spage layouts and page objects, it runs the appropriate RIP software onthe DSPs 757.

The DSPs 757 rasterize each page description and compress the rasterizedpage image. The main processor stores each compressed page image inmemory. The simplest way to load-balance multiple DSPs is to let eachDSP rasterize a separate page. The DSPs can always be kept busy since anarbitrary number of rasterized pages can, in general, be stored inmemory. This strategy only leads to potentially poor DSP utilizationwhen rasterizing short documents.

Watermark regions in the page description are rasterized to acontone-resolution bi-level bitmap which is losslessly compressed tonegligible size and which forms part of the compressed page image.

The infrared (IR) layer of the printed page contains coded netpage tagsat a density of about six per inch. Each tag encodes the page ID, tagID, and control bits, and the data content of each tag is generatedduring rasterization and stored in the compressed page image.

The main processor 750 passes back-to-back page images to the duplexedprint engine controllers 760. Each print engine controller 760 storesthe compressed page image in its local memory, and starts the pageexpansion and printing pipeline. Page expansion and printing ispipelined because it is impractical to store an entire 114 MB bi-levelCMYK+IR page image in memory.

7.4.2 Print Engine Controller

The page expansion and printing pipeline of the print engine controller760 consists of a high speed IEEE 1394 serial interface 659, a standardJPEG decoder 763, a standard Group 4 Fax decoder 764, a customhalftoner/compositor unit 765, a custom tag encoder 766, a lineloader/formatter unit 767, and a custom interface 768 to the Memjet™printhead 350.

The print engine controller 360 operates in a double buffered manner.While one page is loaded into DRAM 769 via the high speed serialinterface 659, the previously loaded page is read from DRAM 769 andpassed through the print engine controller pipeline. Once the page hasfinished printing, the page just loaded is printed while another page isloaded.

The first stage of the pipeline expands (at 763) the JPEG-compressedcontone CMYK layer, expands (at 764) the Group 4 Fax-compressed bi-levelblack layer, and renders (at 766) the bi-level netpage tag layeraccording to the tag format defined in section 1.2, all in parallel. Thesecond stage dithers (at 765) the contone CMYK layer and composites (at765) the bi-level black layer over the resulting bi-level CMYK layer.The resultant bi-level CMYK+IR dot data is buffered and formatted (at767) for printing on the Memjet™ printhead 350 via a set of linebuffers. Most of these line buffers are stored in the off-chip DRAM. Thefinal stage prints the six channels of bi-level dot data (includingfixative) to the Memjet™ printhead 350 via the printhead interface 768.

When several print engine controllers 760 are used in unison, such as ina duplexed configuration, they are synchronized via a shared line syncsignal 770. Only one print engine 760, selected via the externalmaster/slave pin 771, generates the line sync signal 770 onto the sharedline.

The print engine controller 760 contains a low-speed processor 772 forsynchronizing the page expansion and rendering pipeline, configuring theprinthead 350 via a low-speed serial bus 773, and controlling thestepper motors 675, 676.

In the 8½″ versions of the netpage printer, the two print engines eachprints 30 Letter pages per minute along the long dimension of the page(11″), giving a line rate of 8.8 kHz at 1600 dpi. In the 12″ versions ofthe netpage printer, the two print engines each prints 45 Letter pagesper minute along the short dimension of the page (8½″), giving a linerate of 10.2 kHz. These line rates are well within the operatingfrequency of the Memjet™ printhead, which in the current design exceeds30 kHz.

8 Selection of Objects via Netpages 8.1 Content Selection andAssociation of Objects

The netpage system provides a mechanism to allow users to select anobject on a printed netpage and submit it to an application, e.g. toassociate the selected object with another object in the netpage system.

In one preferred embodiment, the selection mechanism is effected bycircumscribing the graphical representation of an object using thenetpage pen. The user may then submit the selected object to anapplication by activating a selection hyperlink via the same or anotherprinted netpage.

The registration server maintains a current selection for each pen,describing a region of a page instance from which the selection has beenmade. This description includes the most recent digital ink strokecaptured by way of transmitted signals from the pen relative to thebackground area of the page. Pen strokes are interpreted in anapplication-specific manner once they are submitted to an applicationvia a selection hyperlink activation. When the user ‘clicks’ on aselection hyperlink, the page server obtains the pen's current selectionfrom the registration server and transmits it to the correspondingapplication as part of the selection hyperlink activation, thusassociating the two objects.

When the application receives a selection hyperlink activation, itretrieves the content of the selection from the page server whichmanages the page from which the selection was made. The application maythen retrieve the selection as formatted data, allowing it to interpretthe object in the form of the selected region in an application-specificmanner in relation to the formatted data, or as unformatted data,allowing it to rely on the page server to interpret the selection regionin a meaningful way.

When requesting unformatted data, the application may specify a desiredscope to assist the interpretation of the selected region by the pageserver. Possible scopes include letter, word, phrase, line, paragraphand article. If the page server is unable to interpret the selectionregion according to the desired scope, it may reject the application'srequest for the content of the selection.

The selection content returned by the page server to the application mayinclude field values. Typically however, only field values which havebeen submitted as part of a form submission are included.

An author of a document can assist selection of articles by grouping allthe elements of an article into an article group 507, as shown in FIG.31. If the application specifies an article as the scope in itsselection request, the page server attempts to find an article grouprelated to the selection region.

The protocol for selection hyperlink activation and subsequent selectioncontent retrieval, illustrated diagrammatically in FIG. 34, operates asfollows.

When page server A receives a selection hyperlink ‘click’, it retrieves510 the current selection associated with the pen from the registrationserver. The selection is described by a page ID 511 and a region 512.The page server then constructs a selection hyperlink request 508 (i.e.a specialization of the hyperlink request 934, shown in FIG. 26). Theselection hyperlink request contains the pen's current selection asshown in FIG. 32. The page server then transmits its own server ID, thehyperlink request ID, and the link ID to the application in the usualway. It also sends the pen's current selection to the application. Theapplication uses the page ID in the current selection to identify thepage server managing the page on which the selection was made (ie. pageserver A). It then requests the content of the selection from this pageserver in the desired format 514 and according to the desired scope 513.Page server B uses the server ID and hyperlink request ID supplied bythe application to obtain the selection from original page server A.Page server B obtains the selection from page server A rather than fromthe application in order to ensure that the application does not modifythe selection to obtain information not intended by the user.

As an alternative, page server A could sign the selection sent to theapplication, allowing page server B to easily verify that the selectionsupplied by the application has not been modified. Once page server Bhas the selection, it retrieves the selected page from its database anddetermines the content of the selection according to the application'sdesired format and scope. Finally the page server returns the selectioncontent 515 to the application for application-specific processing.

If the page on which the selection was made was generated by the sameapplication as that handling the selection hyperlink activation, thenthe application has direct access to the page (i.e. the application canretrieve the entire page from the relevant page server by way of thepage ID of the page) and may already have done so before the selectionhyperlink is activated. In this case, the application preferablyinterprets the selection region without reference to the selectioncontent retrieval mechanism.

Selection of an object may of course alternatively be performed using adraggable command. This has an advantage in that a selection stroke canbe distinguished from a normal input stroke wherever the stroke is made.The user may therefore select an object without inadvertently enteringan input stroke into a field. As such, a user is also able to select anobject that resides entirely within a field relatively easily.

The application may define the selection command in the form of aselection page server command 509, as shown in FIG. 33. This may beplaced in a standard location on all netpages, to provide consistentsupport for selection in much the same way that there is consistentsupport for page duplication.

When a selection page server command is activated by a user, the pageserver forwards the corresponding stroke to the registration server tobe recorded as the current selection for the pen. Apart from thisdifference, the selection mechanism operates in the same way aspreviously described.

As an example, in a netpage e-mail application, clicking on an <attach>button at the bottom of every e-mail composition page effects attachmentof the current selection at the current end of the body of the e-mail.The attachment can consist of any object or objects, which are capableof selection, on any netpage page. The user may have made this selectionfrom, say, selecting text (eg. word/sentence/paragraph/article) fromanother netpage page, or selecting a photograph (eg. by circumscription)from a photo collection page. The entire e-mail may then be reprintedwith the attachment included, additional pages being automatically addedto the e-mail to accommodate the attachment.

8.1 Text Selection and Operations thereon

FIG. 35 shows the styled text object 855 of FIG. 15 decomposed into aset of styled paragraphs 1012, styled words 1014 and styled characters1016. Styling may be applied at any level. In the absence of styling ata particular level styling is inherited from the parent level. Eachstyled character 1016 has an associated character code. This may utilizethe Unicode encoding scheme or another encoding scheme.

A formatted element 835 associated with a textflow element 848 is aformatted textflow fragment 1018. The formatted textflow fragmentconsists of a set of formatted text lines 1020. Each formatted text linehas a spatial extent or zone on the page. Each formatted text lineconsists of a set of formatted word fragments 1022, each of which hasits own zone. The zone of formatted text line is the union of the zonesof its word fragments. Each formatted word fragment is associated with astyled word 1014. Where a styled word is broken across multiple lines ithas multiple formatted word fragments. Where the entire styled word lieswithin a single line it has a single formatted word fragment. Eachformatted word fragment consists of a set of formatted characters 1024,each of which has a zone and is associated with a styled character. Thezone of a formatted word fragment is the union of the zones of itsformatted characters.

FIG. 36 shows a fragment 1030 of a printed page bearing a singletwo-line paragraph of text. The words (“in Spain”) are showncircumscribed by a stroke 1032 of a netpage pen.

FIG. 37 shows a fragment 1034 of a printed page including a set ofcommand buttons 1036, 1038, 1040, 1042, 1044 and 1046 designed tooperate on the current selection. It also includes a text field 1048 forentering an arbitrary text string.

FIG. 38 shows part of the object diagram corresponding to the styledtext of FIG. 36. The styled text consists of a single styled paragraph1012 a, the first two styled words 1014 a and 1014 b of which are shown.Because the words are unbroken, they consist of one formatted wordfragment each, 1022 a and 1022 b respectively. The two styled words eachconsists of a set of styled characters 1016 a-c and 1016 d-grespectively. The two formatted word fragments each consists of a set offormatted characters 1022 a-c and 1022 d-g respectively. As shown in theFigure, formatted character 1022 d corresponds to the initial letter “r”of “rain”.

The user can utilize a number of different pen gestures to effect textselection, as described in more detail in Section 9.2 below. A click ona word can be used to select that word (see FIG. 41). The position ofthe click is compared with the zone of each word, and the word whosezone it lies within is selected. Circumscription (or lassoing) can beused to select of one or more words. The degree of overlap between theregion enclosed by the circumscribing stroke and the zone of each wordis used to determine whether the word is selected. The required overlapcan be configured by the user. Underlining can be used to select one ormore words (see FIG. 42). A line-like stroke which doesn't otherwiseselect any words is interpreted as an underline. Since the orientationof the text is known, the text which lies above the underlining strokecan be identified.

As described previously, the current selection is available to anapplication which is the target of a selection hyperlink 864. When anapplication receives a selection hyperlink activation, it can requestthe current selection.

A number of useful applications can utilize text selections. Theselected text can be copied to the clipboard of the user's graphicaluser interface (GUI) operating system (e.g. Microsoft Windows, AppleMacintosh OS X, or Linux) for use by other GUI applications. FIG. 37shows a <copy text> command button 1038 which causes the currentlyselected text to be copied to the clipboard. Variants of this functioncan be provided, such as <copy & paste text> which copies and thenpastes the selected text into the currently active GUI application.Under Microsoft Windows this can usually be effected by inserting acontrol-V keystroke into the keystroke input queue. It can also beeffected using Windows Automation, by identifying and invoking thecurrent application's Paste method.

In addition to utilizing an explicit <copy text> command, the user canoperate in a mode where all strokes, if interpretable as selectionstrokes, cause the selected text to be automatically copied to theclipboard of the GUI operating system. The user can also cause suchcopying to occur by utilizing one or more specific gestures, such astapping on a word twice, or circumscribing a set of words twice, orwriting the letter “C” and then circling it.

FIG. 37 shows a <search> command button 1040 which causes the currentlyselected text to be used in a search, such as a search of the World-wideWeb using a search engine such as Google or Yahoo!. Invoking a Websearch engine consists of constructing a URI which identifies the searchengine and includes the selected text as a parameter, and then issuingan HTTP GET or POST using that URI. For example, in the case of Googleit's a matter of appending the selected text to“http://www.google.com/search?q=”, separating multiple words by “+”, andoptionally enclosing multiple words in quotes (“%22”) to cause them tobe interpreted as a single phrase. The result of the search is eitherdisplayed on the user's desktop or mobile computer, on the user's mobilephone or PDA, or is printed on a netpage printer, all according to theuser's configured preference. The search command may also be linked to asearch of the user's personal file system.

FIG. 37 shows a <dictionary> command button 1042 which causes thecurrently selected text to be used in a dictionary lookup, such as alookup using a Web-based dictionary. The result is either displayed orprinted according to the user's configured preference.

FIG. 37 shows an <encyclopedia> command button 1044 which causes thecurrently selected text to be used in an encyclopedia lookup, such as alookup using a Web-based encyclopedia such as wikipedia. The result iseither displayed or printed according to the user's configuredpreference.

FIG. 37 shows a <translate> command button 1046 which causes thecurrently selected text to be translated into the user's preferred (orpreviously specified) language. The language of selected text is oftenknown from the resource description 842 associated with the styled textobject 855. Where the document 836 is derived from a Webpage, thelanguage is commonly known. The result is either displayed, printed oroutput as sampled or synthesized audio according to the user'sconfigured preference.

Each command button 1038 through 1046 is implemented as a selectionhyperlink.

When user invokes a selection hyperlink which causes the targetapplication to request the currently selected text, it is possible forthe most recent strokes entered by the user to lie in a text field. As aconfigurable option (and as a per-request option) the system deliversthe corresponding recognized text in place of any previously selectedtext.

FIG. 37 shows a text field 1048. This is provided for the convenience ofthe user to allow the user to manually enter text to be processed in thesame way as a text selection, as described in the previous paragraph.

The entire collection of command buttons shown in FIG. 37, as well asthe text field 1048, can be provided for the user's convenience on aseparate “command card”, or can be optionally printed as a “command bar”at the bottom of every page.

As described earlier in relation to the <copy text> command, the usercan also invoke these commands by utilizing a specific gestures, such aswriting a corresponding letter and then circling it, e.g. “C” for<copy>, “S” for <search>, “D” for <dictionary>, “E” for <encyclopedia>,and “T’ for <translate>.

8.2 Arbitrary Object Selection and Clippings

An application which is a target of a selection hyperlink can query thecontent of the most recent selection, and can specify the format thatthe selection should be returned in. For example, the application canuse the selection to retrieve text (a word, multiple words, a line,multiple lines, a paragraph, an article, etc.), an object (such as anyof the object types listed in FIG. 15), a page, or the entire document.In the latter case the Netpage system can export the document as aself-contained file, or provide a portable reference to it (with theunique document ID or document instance ID encoded in a URI).

The application may also request a “clipping”, i.e. graphic page contentclipped to the most recent selection stroke. A clipping optionallyremains active, i.e. hyperlinks and/or fields embedded in the pagebecome part of the clipping, e.g. encoded in HTML. A clipping includes,by default, any digital ink strokes on the original page.

FIG. 37 shows a <copy image> command button 1036. It causes thecurrently selected image or clipping to be copied to the clipboard ofthe GUI operating system for use by other GUI applications. The userselects an image by tapping it. The user selects a clipping bycircumscribing it.

Many other commands which copy objects to the clipboard of the GUIoperating system are possible. It is also possible to provide a generic<copy> command which causes the current selection to be advertised onthe clipboard in multiple formats (e.g. plain text, rich text, HTML,image, document, or document reference). The GUI application whichretrieves the selection from the clipboard can then allow the user toselect the desired format. Most GUI operating systems allow a form of“lazy” copying to the clipboard, where the copying application initiallyonly copies an object reference to the clipboard, and only copies theobject to the clipboard in its final format once it is notified that anapplication has attempted to retrieve the object from the clipboard.

9 Improvements in Netpage Functionality

In Section 1.3, recordal of digital ink in a background field 833 wasdescribed. The background field 833 records any digital ink which doesnot apply to any specific input element, as determined using the pagedescription.

Rather than merely recording such digital ink in a background field, itwould be desirable to provide a netpage user with useful informationupon every interaction with a netpage, irrespective of whether the userhas interacted with a specific input element on a netpage. This wouldnot only enhance the service provided to netpage users, but alsoencourages use of the netpage system. In Section 8.3, operationsperformed on text selected by the sensing device were described. Forexample, selected text may be inserted into a web keyword search engine(e.g Google) to provide feedback to a user. Searching based on selectedtext provides a means for delivering useful information to the user witheach interaction with a netpage, especially if such searches areenhanced with contextual information.

Alternatively, a user may wish to receive information based on keywordsearching, even if the keyword is contained in an input element on anetpage.

As used herein, the term “keyword” is used to mean a keyword orkey-phrase. In other words, a “keyword” is a term which may comprisemore than one word.

9.1 Basic Architecture for Improved Functionality 9.1.1 SystemArchitecture

The basic architecture required for keyword and/or contextual searchingmay be essentially the same as that already described in connection withFIGS. 1 and 3.

Referring to FIG. 39, a user interacts with a printed netpage 1 using asensing device 101, such as netpage clicker, pointer or pen. The sensingdevice 101 reads and decodes coded data on the printed netpage 1. Asdescribed earlier, the coded data is typically in the form of tags 4tiled over the printed page 1, or the coded data may be in the form ofone or more barcodes.

The sensing device 101 then transmits interaction data to a user's localrelay device 601. The interaction data typically identifies the printedpage (or a region thereof) and at least one position of the sensingdevice relative to the page 1. The interaction data is generated by thesensing device 601 using coded data read by the sensing device wheninteracting with the printed netpage 1.

As described earlier, the relay device 601 typically comprises a userdisplay and web browser. The relay device may be a portable device, suchas a mobile phone or PDA, or it may be a laptop computer, desktopcomputer or information appliance connected to a shared display such asa TV.

Once the relay device 601 has received the interaction data from thesensing device 101, it then relays this interaction data to the pageserver 10. The interaction data may be encoded into a suitable form bythe relay device 601 before being relayed to the page server 10. Asshown in FIG. 39, the relay device 601 encodes the interaction data intoa URI and then transmits the resulting interaction URI to the pageserver 10 via its web browser. However the interaction data is encodedby the relay device 601, it will be understood that the page server 10receives interaction data, which identifies the printed netpage 1 and atleast one position of the sensing device relative to the printed page.

Once the page server 10 has received the interaction data, it retrievesa page description 5 corresponding to the printed netpage 1, typicallyusing the page ID 50. The page description 5, optionally in combinationwith other sources of information (e.g. user profile, personality of thesensing device, mode of the sensing device, and document content),enables the page server to interpret the interaction data. In the caseof contextual searching, the page server 10 identifies a search termusing the interaction data and the page description 5. A request isformed from the search term and interpreted by the page server 10. Therequest may comprise, for example, keywords and/or context data whichassist in interpretation of the keywords. The page server 10 mayinterpret the request by accessing web services 200, such as keywordsearch engines, via the internet. Alternatively, or additionally, thepage server 10 may have local web resources for interpreting therequest.

Once the page server 10 has interpreted the request, it then constructsa webpage to send back to the user's relay device 601. The webpage isconstructed using, for example, search results generated by the webservices 200 blended with information provided by local web resources.The resultant webpage is transmitted back to the web browser running onthe user's relay device 601, which typically displays the webpage. Ifthe relay device 601 is a netpage printer, the webpage may be printedout.

Referring to FIG. 1, an alternative system architecture may be used,whereby the relay device 601 obtains the webpage via a two-stepretrieval process. Interaction data is sent from the sensing device 101to the relay device 601 in the usual way. The relay device then sendsthe interaction data to the page server 10 for interpretation withreference to the relevant page description 5. The page server 10 forms arequest by identifying a target URI, and/or search terms and,optionally, context data. However, rather than the page server 10interpreting the request, it typically encodes the request into a URIand sends this request URI back to the user's relay device 601. The webbrowser running on the relay device 601 then sends the request URI to anetpage web server 201, which interprets the request. The netpage webserver 201 may interact with local web resources and external webservices 200 to interpret the request and construct a webpage. Once thewebpage has been constructed by the netpage web server 201, it istransmitted to the web browser running on the user's relay device 601,which typically displays the webpage.

Referring to FIG. 1, a further alternative system architecture may beused whereby the relay device 601 also obtains the webpage via atwo-step process, but where both steps are mediated by the web browser.As in the architecture depicted in FIG. 39, the relay device 601 encodesthe interaction data in a URI and transmits it to the netpage pageserver 10 via its web browser. As in the architecture depicted in FIG.40, the page server returns a corresponding request URI to the relaydevice 601, but in the form of an HTTP redirect response that redirectsthe web browser to a different web site—i.e. as identified by therequest URI embedded in the redirect response. The web browser then usesthe request URI to obtain the corresponding webpage in the same way asdescribed in relation to FIG. 40.

In any of the architectures described above, where the interaction dataidentifies a third-party webpage rather than a request for a blendedwebpage directed at the netpage web server 201, the request URI simplyidentifies that third-party webpage.

Any reference to a webpage should be taken to include any web orinternet resource or content, such as a remote application with a webinterface, a script (e.g. JavaScript), a document (e.g. Microsoft Word,Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft XPS, or Adobe PDF), an animation (e.g.Macromedia Flash), a video clip, an audio clip, whether interacted withremotely, streamed, or downloaded in its entirety, and whether supportednatively by a web browser or via a plugin.

9.2 Interaction Interpretation

In either of the system architectures described above in FIGS. 41A and41B, the page server 10 receives interaction data from the relay device601 and must determine what action is required. In the case of keywordsearching (and contextual searching), the page server 10 forms a requestusing search terms identified from the page description. In the case ofhyperlinking, the page server merely identifies a correspondinghyperlink URI and either returns this URI to the user's web browser orretrieves a corresponding webpage and sends the webpage directly to theuser's relay device 601.

9.2.1 Interactions or Stokes

An interaction with a printed netpage 1 made with a sensing device 101may alternatively be called a stroke. A stroke usually consists of thefollowing information:

-   -   A page identifier that indicates the page and document with        which the user is interacting.    -   One or more (x,y) positions over which the sensing device passed        during the stroke.    -   The state of any buttons on the sensing device during the        stroke.

Alternatively a stroke may be retrieved via a scan of a conventional barcode, in which case, the stroke will not contain (x,y) position data,but the page identifier will identify the scanned product code.

Very basic sensing devices may only be capable of recording a single(x,y) position for each stroke. Such devices are called clickers, asopposed to pointers which are devices capable of producing a sequence ofpositions. Much netpage functionality can be delivered via a clickerdevice, and enables a user to click anywhere resulting is somethinguseful happening (e.g. hyperlinking or contextual searching). Forexample, in one mode, the page server 10 determines whether a user hasclicked on a hyperlink element on the printed netpage. If the user hasclicked within a zone of a hyperlink element, the page server identifiesa corresponding hyperlink URI, thereby enabling the correspondingwebpage to be retrieved and displayed on the user's relay device 601.However, if the page server 10 determines that the user has clickedoutside the zone of a hyperlink, it may initiate keyword and/orcontextual searching by identifying a search term from the pagedescription and forming a request, as discussed in further detailherein. In this way, the user will receive a useful piece of informationno matter where he clicks on the printed netpage 1.

Thus, strokes may be simple clicks which consist of a single (x,y)coordinate position on a page, or (for a pointer device) consist of asmall number of such position samples all localized within a smallregion on a page. Pointers can also be used to generate longer strokeswhich consist of a sequence of (x,y) coordinates on a page not confinedto a small region. Such strokes may be further classified as beinglines, swipes, lassos, etc., and the act of interpreting a stroke inthis way is called gesture recognition, where click, swipe, lasso, etc.are examples of gestures.

FIG. 42A shows an example of a click gesture to indicate one word oftext. FIG. 42B shows a swipe or underline gesture to indicate threewords of text. FIG. 38 shows a lasso gesture to indicate two words oftext.

The significance of gestures is that a stroke processing system,typically the page server 10, can take a stroke's gesture into accountwhen determining a desired behavior.

9.2.2 Stroke Interpretation and Behaviors

Stroke interpretation takes into account the following information inorder to determine the intended meaning of a stroke:

-   -   The stroke details as described earlier. As mentioned, this        includes interpreting the stroke's gesture. For example, did the        user click, or did they perform a lasso gesture?    -   The document contents (i.e. visual layout) at the location        indicated by the stroke.    -   Interactivity markup associated with the location within the        document indicated by the stroke (see Section 9.3).    -   The type of the device, and any current device configuration.

Stroke interpretation takes place under the control of a strokeinterpreter 202 as shown in FIG. 43. A stroke interpreter 202 receives astroke and determines what to do with it. A stroke interpreter mayeither be a stroke router 203 or a behavior 204. A stroke router 203maintains a set of references to other stroke interpreters and passeseach stroke received on to one of those stroke interpreters based ondetails of the stroke received. A stroke router 203 may thereby beviewed as a non-leaf node within the stroke processing graph. Behaviors204 are the leaves of that graph which perform concrete (i.e.non-routing) actions based on the stroke received. Many useful behaviorscan be conceived. Table 3 provides some examples.

TABLE 3 Behavior Description Show URI This behavior looks for theuppermost URI (in terms of layering of interactivity markup) andpresents that URI in the user's web browser. Basic Text Interpretsgestures as indicating a zone within the document to Search examine fortext. Any discovered text is then sent to a 3rd party search provider(e.g. Google, Yahoo, answers.com, etc) and the results displayed in aweb browser. Different gestures can be used to indicate differentamounts of text to be queried. For example, a click gesture generallyindicates a single word, while a swipe or lasso gesture can be used toselect multiple words. Contextual Text This behavior performs a textsearch as in “Basic Text Search”, but Search it endeavors to improve theresults obtained by taking into account the context around the selectedtext. This context can include both the surrounding text in thedocument's visual layout or can make use of interactivity markupkeywords located at or near the location of the triggering stroke.Content This behavior interprets gestures as indicating a zone withinthe Extraction document. That zone is then copied out of the document(extracted) to allow it, for example, to be pasted into a desktopapplication, or emailed to a friend.

Still referring to FIG. 43, stroke routers 203 can be further subdivided into device personalities 205, gesture based routers 206,document based routers 207, and sequential routers 208.

A device personality 205 is a button based router as shown in FIG. 44.It uses details of the state of device buttons for a stroke to determinethe stroke interpreter to which the stroke should be routed. That is,when a stroke is received by netpage system, the button state indicatedby the stroke is used to route the stroke. Thus different buttons 209 ona sensing device 101 can be used to trigger arbitrarily differentbehaviors 210 from the netpage system. FIG. 45 provides an exampleconsisting of four sensing devices. The personality 205 assigned to eachdevice 101 defines which behavior 210 to use when strokes are receivedfor that device while a particular button is pressed. The currentpersonality for a device can be changed dynamically, for example basedon user preference.

A gesture based router 206 determines the target stroke interpreter bytaking into account the gesture that the stroke represents. Usinggesture recognition allows for multiple behaviors to be supported evenfor devices with a single button. An example is shown in FIG. 46 inwhich a gesture based router 206 is defined which uses the “Show URI”behavior for clicks, “Text Search” behavior for swipes, and a “ContentExtraction” behavior for lassos. Such gesture based behaviors can alsobe included in multi-button personalities as shown in FIG. 47.

A document based router 207 determines the target stroke interpreter bytaking into account details of the document (potentially both visuallayout and interactivity markup), and location within the document, onwhich the stroke was made. Examples of both gesture and document basedrouters are provided in Section 9.4.

A sequential router 208 maintains an ordered list of stroke interpretersand each stroke interpreter is consulted in turn to see whether it canhandle the stroke. As an example, the “Show URI” behavior can becombined with the “Text Search” behavior to produce a behavior whichshows a URI if one is present at the location of a stroke, but fallsback to performing a text search otherwise.

9.3 Interactivity Markup

The netpage system stores details of each document's visual layout, andoptionally stores additional interactivity markup for each document.Typically, this information is stored in the page description 5. Themarkup consists of data associated with zones 58 within the document inquestion, either directly, or indirectly via structural markup. A zone58 is defined as predetermined area within a document. Zones 58 can belayered such that one zone is consider to be in front of another.

The term “interactivity markup” is used in the present description torefer to any document markup available for interpretation by behaviors.This includes general purpose semantic markup (some of which may usethird party standards such as the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative), aswell as netpage specific markup which is only understood by strokeinterpreters within the netpage system.

Markup can be authored manually, although the netpage system alsoautomatically generates markup for a document upon reception of thatdocument. Automated markup is discussed in Section 9.3.1.

In its most general form, interactivity markup is simply data (typicallytext) associated with zones 58 within a document 836. Markup zones canbe layered such that one zone is considered to be in front of another.As already stated, some of the markup associated with a document isbased on the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) element set asdescribed herein. This provides compatibility with existing (and future)third party document analysis tools. Additional netpage specific markupcan also be specified, the object model for which is described herein.

All markup (both DCMI and netpage specific) is available to the variousstroke interpreters 202 in order to allow them to determine the user'sintent upon reception of a stroke from a sensing device 101. In general,the interpretation of the interactivity markup within each zone 58 isnot defined within the markup itself. Instead the interpretation is leftto individual stroke interpreters. In fact, different strokeinterpreters may interpret the same markup in different ways and mayalso completely ignore various pieces of markup.

Interactivity markup could potentially be specified in any number ofdifferent formats. XML provides a grammar with a suitable level ofexpressiveness, and is ubiquitous within the computing domain. For thesake of exposition XML is used in the present description to representmarkup examples. The XML schema is not formally defined, but thesemantics should be sufficiently discernible from the surrounding textdescriptions.

9.3.1 Automatic Markup Creation

Much document markup can be determined via automated processing of thevisual layout of documents submitted to the netpage system. Examples ofmarkup elements that can be determined automatically arestructural/textual markup elements such as:

-   -   <word> elements for identifying each word within the document,    -   <term> elements for identifying multi-word terms.    -   <paragraph>, <section>, and <article> elements for identifying        structure within the document.

More details regarding approaches to automated textual markup aredescribed herein.

Automated processing can also discover the presence of textual URIs inthe document's visual layout and produce corresponding <URI> markupelements.

Some behaviors can perform much or all of their activities by usingautomated markup alone.

9.4 Standard Stroke Interpreters

This section presents the standard netpage stroke interpreters 202(mostly behaviors) along with a description of the way in which theiractions correspond to the strokes received and the interactivity markuppresent in the underlying document.

Each interaction consists of an initiating stroke and a resultantresponse from a behavior. For each initiating stroke, all markup that isdetermined to lie underneath the stroke is called the candidate markupset and most, but not all, stroke interpreters limit theirconsiderations to markup that belongs to the candidate markup set.Candidate markup is ordered according to the layering present in themarkup with uppermost markup generally having precedence over underlyingmarkup. In addition, candidate markup retains the location informationfor each element. That can be used, for example, to determine theintended ordering between two <word> elements.

9.4.1 “Show URI” Behavior

The “Show URI” behavior looks for the uppermost <URI> markup element(i.e. a link 844, as described in Section 9.7.1) in the candidate markupand presents that URI on the user's machine (typically inside the user'sweb browser). All other markup elements are ignored (except in the caseof parameterized URI specifications as discussed later).

The “Show URI” behavior provides the basis for hyperlinks to be authoredinto documents. For example, if the behavior is mapped to the clickgesture for button 1, then clicking with button 1 in an area of a pagewith the following associated <URI> markup:

<URI value=“www.nytimes.com”/>causes the New York Times home page to be displayed in the user's webbrowser.

The “Show URI” behavior supports parameterized URI specifications suchas that shown below:

<URI value=“www.wikipedia.org/wiki%%word%%”/>

The %%word%% string is a place-holder which is replaced with acorresponding string by the behavior before the URI is interpreted ortransmitted to the user's machine. In the case of the %%word%%place-holder, it is replaced with the value of the uppermost <word>markup element in the candidate markup set. Note that <word> elementsare generally created automatically (see Section 9.3.1) and correspondto the words discovered in the underlying document's visual layout. Anexample is shown in FIG. 48. The <URI> element is associated with theentire page, while each word in the text has been assigned a <word>element (only a few of which are shown in the FIG. 48). Thus, if astroke is routed to the “Show URI” behavior and falls on top of a wordthen that word will be displayed in Wikipedia.

If the user interacts with a location on the page that does not containa <word> element, then the “Show URI” behavior will fail to create thedestination URI (since the %%word%% place-holder cannot be replaced) andit will not pass the (incomplete) URI to the user. That is, interactingon the background of the page under the “Show URI” behavior will resultin no action taking place, which is likely what the user would expect inthis case.

9.4.2 Search Behaviors

Netpage provides a number of behaviors that can be collectivelydescribed as “search” behaviors since their purpose is to locateadditional information about items that the user interacts with on theprinted page.

9.4.2.1 “Word Search” Behavior

The “Word Search” behavior looks for the uppermost <word> markupelement(s) in the candidate markup set and creates and invokes acorresponding URI which includes that word or sequence of words.

The actual URI used by the “Word Search” behavior is a configurablesetting (e.g. per user, per publisher, per publication, etc.). Generallythe URI should refer to a search engine or other word lookup web site.For example, the following lists some URIs that would be appropriate forthe “Word Search” behavior:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%%words%%http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%%words%%http://www.answers.com%%words%%http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki%%words%%http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%%words%%

The URIs use the same parameterized URI format as described in Section9.4.1, although, unlike the example in Section 9.4.1, generally theconfiguration of the URI to be used by the “Word Search” behavior wouldnot be placed in document markup. More likely is for the URI to bedynamically configurable to allow, for example, a user to change theirpreference of “Word Search” engine across all of their documents with asingle action.

While the “Word Search” engine would generally be configured outside ofdocuments, it is still possible to configure aspects of the enginewithin documents for certain purposes. As an example, a pharmaceuticalcompany “company X” may publish a two page advertisement in a magazine,the second page consisting of fine print regarding the product beingadvertised. On that second page, the company may choose to override the“Word Search” URI so that technical words are defined by the company,rather than leaving definitions to the vagaries of the user's preferredengine. That can be achieved by associating a <search-uri> markupelement (i.e. a search template term with a search template URI 1136, asdescribed in Section 9.7.2) with the page. For example:

<search-uri value=“http://www.company-x.search/search?q=%%words%%”/>

During stroke processing, if the “Word Search” behavior discovers a<search-uri> element in the candidate markup set, then it uses that URIin preference to the default URI. The <search-uri> element thus providesa means to provide a restricted domain search facility.

Another use case in which <search-uri> might be used is in anadvertisement for a search engine company. For example, an advertisementfor answers.com might override <search-uri> so that all searchesinitiated from the advertisement are routed to answers.com:

<search-uri value=“http://www.answers.com%%words%%”/><search-uri> hard codes a URI into the markup of a document. That may beundesirable since the exact URI used may need to change after thedocument is published. For example, suppose the format of answers.comsearch URIs changes. In that case, the advertiser would like to changethe URI to, for example:<search-uri value=“http://www.answers.com?q=%%words%%”/>

While changing the markup associated with a document is possible (sincethe markup is stored online) it is somewhat inconvenient to do so. As analternative, the “Word Search” behavior supports the concept ofpre-defined engines via the <search-engine> element (i.e. a searchengine term with a search engine identifier 1137, as described inSection 9.7.2):

<search-engine value=“answers.com”/>which can be used to override the search engine used without having todefine the actual URI within the markup. The “Word Search” behaviormaintains a (likely growing) list of known search engines, and for eachengine stores the corresponding (parameterized) URI.

Returning to the pharmaceutical example, suppose company X does not haveits own search facility, but would like to be able to restrict searches(performed by third party engines) to within a particular internetdomain (e.g. www.company-x.com). The <search-domain> element (i.e. asearch domain term with a search domain 1138, as described in Section9.7.2) can be used to instruct the “Word Search” behavior to instructsearch engines to restrict results to those that lie within thespecified domain. For example:

<search-domain value=“www.company-x.com”/>

As an example, if the above element is found in the candidate markupset, and the default search engine is Google, then clicking on <wordvalue=“medicine”/> would result in the following URI being invoked:

http://www.google.com/search?q=medicine+site:www.company-x.com

Some search engines will not be capable of supporting restricted domainsearching. In the case that the default engine is such an engine, thenthe “Word Search” behavior could possibly fall back on using an enginethat does support restricted domain searching. As such a user'sconfiguration might actually consist of an ordered list of preferredengines. The “Word Search” behavior would then select the most preferredengine that is capable of performing the requested search.

As the “Word Search” behavior can act on multiple words, it isconvenient to map it to a gesture that allows multiple words to beselected. A swipe gesture, for example. FIG. 46 provided an example of asingle button personality where the swipe gesture was mapped to a searchbehavior. FIG. 49 provided an example of a multi button personality inwhich, for one button, both the click and swipe gestures were mapped toa search behavior.

The quality of results retrieved via a text search can be enhanced bytaking into account the surrounding context from the document from whichthe search is initiated. The “Word Search” behavior can perform suchcontextual searches and this is described in more detail below.

9.4.2.2 “Text Search” Behavior

The “Text Search” behavior is a generalization of the “Word Search”behavior to support searching of multi-word terms in addition to basicword(s) searching. The “Text Search” behavior looks for the sameelements as the “Word Search” behavior including the various <search- .. . /> elements which customize the behavior's actions. In addition, the“Text Search” behavior looks for <term> elements. FIG. 49 provides anexample where some text has been marked up with both <word> and <term>elements. Now suppose a personality has been configured such that theclick gesture is mapped to the “Text Search” behavior. In that case,clicking anywhere on “planet” or “mercury” will cause the term “planetmercury” to be added to the candidate markup set. The “Text Search”behavior will then use that term in preference to either word, therebyresulting in better search results (i.e. better than a result obtainedfrom searching for the word “mercury” alone. Such a result would likelycontain entries for the chemical element mercury, as well as entries forcompanies, product etc. with the name “Mercury”).

<term> elements can be manually inserted into document markup, but canalso be automatically discovered as mentioned in Section 9.3.1.

9.4.2.3 “Product Search” Behavior

The “Product Search” behavior looks for <product> elements (i.e. aconcept term 1148 that specifies a concept 1149 which is a productconcept, as described in Section 9.7.2) and creates and invokes acorresponding product search URI. <product> elements are oftenassociated with advertisements, but may also appear in non-advertisingcontent, for example a book review in a magazine may contain a pictureof the book and a <product> element associated with that picture.<product> elements can refer to products in various ways as describedherein (e.g. EAN/UPC codes, ISBN/ISSN numbers, or product names).

As with text searches, the actual URI used for a product search isconfigurable, and overridable. Examples of suitable URIs are:

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=%%product%%http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?satitle=%%product%%

9.4.2.4 “Text and Product Search” Router

The “Text and Product Search” router is a document based router whichcombines text search and product search functionality by invoking the“Text Search” or “Product Search” behavior depending on which elementsare present in the markup. Product markup takes precedence over textual(i.e. <word> and <term>) markup. An example is shown in FIG. 50 in whichbutton 2 is routed via “Text and Product Search” which is a documentbased router that routes strokes to the “Product Search” behavior if a<product> element is present in the candidate markup set, but otherwiseroutes strokes to the “Text Search” behavior.

9.4.2.5 Using Gestures to Combine Text and Product Searches

Another way to combine text and product search is to use gestures todisambiguate situations where both product and textual markup isavailable. An example is shown in FIG. 51. A two button sensing deviceis shown. Button 1 always invokes the “Show URI” behavior regardless ofgesture. Button 2 is the “search” button. Clicks invoke the “Text andProduct Search” behavior meaning that if both textual and product markupis available, a product search will be invoked in preference to a textsearch. The swipe gesture, on the other hand, is mapped directly to the“Text Search” behavior. Thus in cases where the user clicks with thesearch button on some text and unexpectedly invokes a product searchURI, they can invoke the intended text search by swiping rather thanclicking.

9.4.3 Content Extraction Behavior

The “Content Extraction” behavior interprets gestures as indicating anarea within the document. That area is then copied (extracted) from thedocument and made available to the user, to allow it, for example, to bepasted into a desktop application, or emailed to a friend. This istypically achieved by placing the content into the user's clipboard,although details can vary depending on which output device the user isusing to receive responses from the netpage system. This type ofbehavior was described in detail in Section 8 above.

Extracted content can include both the visual layout and the documentmarkup (possibly converted to some standard format such as html). Theretention of interactivity markup allows for the content to beinteracted with even though it is no longer confined to a printedsurface. The advantage of this is that it provides an additional sourceof netpage interactions (e.g. clicks), which provides publishers withadditional value.

9.4.4 “Netpage Portal” Behavior

As described above, a significant use case for the sensing device 101 islinking printed magazine (for example) editorial content to a portalstyle web application which presents:

-   -   More extensive information relating to the print article. e.g.        additional photos, related video, etc.    -   Latest news items related to the principal subject matter of the        article.    -   Advertisements related to the content of the article, but also        potentially related to the location within the article with        which the user interacted.

An example page layout is shown in FIG. 52. The web page correspondingto the URI associated with the article is displayed. The web page isframed so that it can be displayed alongside relevant news and ads.

The “Netpage Portal” behavior supports this use case. It is aspecialization of the more basic “Show URI” behavior in that, like “ShowURI”, it looks for the uppermost <URI> markup element in the candidatemarkup set. Unlike “Show URI”, the “Netpage Portal” behavior does notsimply invoke the URI. Instead, a separate URI is created and invokedwhich typically includes the <URI> element as a parameter. The actualURI used by the portal can be configured both within the netpage system(e.g. system wide, per publisher, per publication, etc.) and withindocument markup. The URI is generally a parameterized URI, minimallywith a place holder which allows for the current <URI> markup element tobe inserted. For example:

http://www.my-portal.com/show?uri=%%uri%%%%uri%% being a standard parameter supported by the netpage URIparameterization facility as introduced in Section 9.4.1. The portaltemplate URI can be specified via a portal specification 1132, asdescribed in Section 9.7.2.

Portal applications can request that additional information be providedvia specification of a more sophisticated URI with place holders for therequired information. All of the information specified by the resourcedescription type and object model described below is available.

In summary, the details of the actual web content displayed by a portalapplication are beyond the responsibilities of the “Netpage Portal”behavior itself, which is only responsible for creating and invoking therequired URI. The next section provides an example of how a portalapplication might work.

9.4.4.1 Netpage Portal Web Application

This briefly describes an example portal application that supports theuse case shown in FIG. 52. The application is invoked via URIs whichhave been generated by the “Netpage Portal” behavior described inSection 9.4.4. The application makes use of the following documentmarkup information:

-   -   <URI>    -   subject descriptions    -   ad search spec terms (see Object Model below)        So, an example parameterized URI (template URI) for the portal        app might look something like:        http://www.netpage-portal.com/article?uri=%%uri%%&subject=%%subject%%&ad-subjects=%%ad-search-specs%%

Repeating, each place holder used above is automatically replaced by the“Netpage Portal” behavior with an encoded form of the correspondingdocument markup information. For the sake of simplicity, this discussionuses the XML markup annotation to refer to such information as if theportal application had direct access to the candidate markup set.

Returning to the portal application, it needs to determine which newsand ad content to display. News content is driven by looking for subjectdescriptions within the candidate markup and automatically fetchinglatest news stories related to the subject. A subject descriptionconsists of a set of weighted terms each of which may be a simplekeyword or may be a concept in an associated ontology. Subjectdescriptions are described in detail in Section 9.7.2. As an example, anarticle may have the following subject description:

<subject> <keyword value=“Paris Hilton” weight=“1.0” /> <keywordvalue=“Nicole Richie” weight=“0.9” /> <keyword value=“argument”weight=“0.5” /> <keyword value=“Jon Murray” weight=“0.2” /> <keywordvalue=“Hollywood” weight=“0.1” /> <keyword value=“Dan Tana” weight=“0.1”/> </subject>

The portal application uses the subject description to determine themost appropriate news stories to present. In the case of the example,the behavior may limit the news stories to those related to Paris Hiltonand Nicole Richie since the other subject terms have relatively smallweightings. As an example, the following URI might be constructed andinvoked in order to source news from the Google news service.

http://news.google.com/news?q=%22paris+hilton%22+%22nicole+richie%22&output=rss

The actual choice of source of news stories is a decision that is leftto the portal application.

Ad selection is driven in a similar way to news story selection, exceptthat it typically makes use of separate subject descriptionsspecifically specified as being associated with the sourcing ofadvertisements. These are referred to as “ad search spec terms” in theObject Model described below. However, although ad search might beconfined to the ad subject description from the “ad search spec terms”,it may also use subject descriptions from the document.

In cases where the portal application does not recognize the received<URI> element as one of its own, the user's web browser is simplyredirected to that URI. That is, interacting with foreign (non-portalhosted) URIs simply results in that URI being shown in the user's webbrowser. If all portal apps provide such forwarding behavior, then thatallows for the “Netpage Portal” behavior to be used as a substitute forthe “Show URI” behavior in all cases.

Alternatively, the portal can frame any web page with news, ads, etc.,e.g. under the control of a user preference.

9.4.5 Cursor Control Behavior

Netpage provides a cursor control behavior where movement of the sensingdevice 101 is converted into a stream of cursor control commands thatare sent to the user interface system controlling the user's displaydevice, thereby to control movement of a cursor displayed on the displaydevice. The display device may be integrated into or be associated withthe relay device 601, or it may be separate. In many graphical userinterface systems (GUIs) cursor control commands are referred to asmouse events since they are commonly generated by mouse devices.

When the cursor control behaviour is in effect, cursor control eventsmay be generated in the page server 10 and transmitted to the user'sdisplay device. When the display device is integrated into or associatedwith the relay device 601, cursor control events may alternatively begenerated in the relay device 601. In this case the relay device 601 andpossibly the sensing device 101 must be aware of when the cursor controlmode is in effect.

The cursor control behaviour may be selected in any of the usual ways,including by selecting a physical mode of the sensing device (e.g. via amode switch or a momentary switch), or by interacting with the zone of acursor control region of a physical surface, either defined in a pagedescription or via the tags themselves, or by selecting a devicepersonality that includes a cursor control behaviour.

Positions generated by a netpage sensing device are intrinsicallyabsolute. This allows such positions to be trivially converted intoabsolute cursor control commands. The extent of the physical surfacewith which the sensing device is interacting is ideally mapped to theextent of the display device for the purposes of translating sensingdevice positions into cursor control commands. Cursor control commandscommonly specify changes in position rather than absolute positions—i.e.they are relative. Absolute positions generated by a netpage sensingdevice are trivially converted into relative cursor control commands.

To support on-screen interactions such as clicking on on-screen buttonsand hyperlinks and dragging on-screen objects, it is also useful toemulate one or more of the buttons that appear on a mouse, or similarly,the pen down sensing capability of a graphics tablet. These can beemulated via one or more physical mode selectors in the sensing device.If the cursor control behaviour is selected via a physical mode of thesensing device, then a second physical mode selector can be used tosignal pen down events. For example, if the sensing device has both amomentary finger switch and a nib switch, then the finger switch can beused to select the cursor control behaviour, and the nib switch can beused to signal pen down. If the cursor control behaviour is selected viaa different mechanism, such as the surface itself or a devicepersonality, then a single physical mode selector can be used to signalpen down events, such as a momentary finger switch or a nib switch.

9.4.6 Handwriting Capture Behavior

Netpage provides a handwriting capture behavior where strokes receivedfrom the sensing device 101 are interpreted as handwritten annotationsor as handwritten form input. The sensing device 101, when assigned ahandwriting capture behaviour, is typically pen-like, i.e. with amarking nib coupled to a nib switch or force sensor. However, anymotion-sensing netpage sensing device can potentially be assigned ahandwriting capture behaviour.

Several variants of the handwriting capture behavior are possible. Apure annotation behavior always captures handwriting as passiveannotations, irrespective of the content of the page description 5. Aform-filling behavior is a superset of the annotation behaviour. Itcaptures form input in form fields 845 and annotations elsewhere. A penbehavior is a superset of the form-filling behavior. It allowshyperlinks to be followed where links 844 are present, but captures forminput and annotations elsewhere.

When a pen-like sensing device 101 has a nib switch or force sensor, butno other physical mode selector, then it is useful to assign it the penbehaviour by default. If it has an additional mode selector, such as amomentary finger switch, then it is possible to assign the annotationbehavior or the form-filling behavior to the nib switch, and assign thehyperlinking behavior (or similar) to the finger switch.

If the sensing device 101 allows the insertion of a cartridge witheither a marking nib 119 or a non-marking nib 121, or allows theextension of one of several cartridges (as described in Section 7.1),then the type of cartridge present (or extended), as indicated by thenib ID transmitted by the sensing device 101 (in a nib change raw strokecomponent 175), constitutes a useful mode selector. For example, the penbehavior, form-filling behavior, or annotation behavior can be assignedto the marking nib 119, and the hyperlinking (“show URI”) behavior (orsimilar) can be assigned to the non-marking nib 121.

The absence of an extended nib (i.e. because it is in a retracted stateor physically absent) also constitutes a useful mode selector. Again, ifthe sensing device has an additional mode selector, such as a momentaryfinger switch, then it is possible to assign the hyperlinking behavior(or similar) to the finger switch precisely when the cartridge isretracted or absent, and to assign a different behaviour to the fingerswitch, such as a content extraction behavior (or similar), when thecartridge is extended (and potentially also in combination with the nibbeing depressed).

9.5 Deployment Phases for Enhanced Netpage Functionality

It is possible to envisage a phased deployment of the enhanced netpagefunctionality described above, as shown in Table 4. The phase names arepreceded by either the letter ‘A’ or ‘D’ where ‘A’ refers to a processthat uses Analog printing (e.g. offset printing), while ‘D’ refers to aprocess that uses Digital printing (e.g. Memjet™) whether it be digitalprinting as replacement for offset printing (phase D-1 and D-2) ordesktop printing (phase D-3).

Phase A-1 provides basic netpage functionality without requiring anymodifications to existing publishing processes. As such, it represents aconvenient first step in adopting netpage. Each subsequent phaseprovides additional netpage functionality, but also requires additionalmodifications to the publishing process as described in Table 4.

TABLE 4 Functionality Phase Supported Process Modification Phase A-1Text Search Automated post Printed URIs processing of documents ContentExtraction required. No modification to standard publishing processrequired. Phase A-2 All of phase A-1 plus: Manual post processingHyperlinks with of documents required in hidded (i.e. not order toassociate printed URIs) hyperlinks (and optionally Keyword keywords)with regions enhanced within documents. hyperlinks Product discoveryPhase A-3 Highly interactive Authoring of document documents. That is,interactivity integrated documents designed with overall authoring fromthe ground up to be process. richly interactive. Phase D-1 Advertisement(and Adoption of digital content) localization and printing. continuousadvertisement splitting. Phase D-2 All of phase D-1 plus Subscriberaddressing at personalized time of printing. advertisements andTargeting of content. advertisements based on models of individualsubscribers (e.g. minimally subscriber's zip code). Phase D-3 Fullycustomized content Individual users print out delivered to individualdocuments on demand users on demand. on desktop printers (seecross-referenced US Patent Applications cited above)

9.5.1 Existing Publishing Process

This section very briefly presents the existing publishing model foroffset printed documents. Subsequent sections then present the variousnetpage deployment phases in terms of changes required to existingprocesses.

FIG. 53 provides a very high level view of the existing publishing modelfor offset printed documents. An authoring step is used to produce avisual layout for the document. That visual layout is then provided toan offset printing process which produces the individual physicalprintouts.

An offset printer consists of a pipeline of printing units. Each unitprints in a single color on one side of the paper passing through theunit. Thus, in order to print double sided in 4 colors (C, M, Y, K) atotal of 8 units is required. Further units are required if any pagelayouts demand varnish or spot colors.

FIG. 53 does not cover complications regarding the fact that existingmagazine publishing processes (for example) will often produce multipledifferent copies of the same edition of a magazine. This is done toallow magazine instances to be tailored to specific target markets. Forexample different versions of a magazine may be produced for differentregions allowing both editorial and advertising content to be tailoredto that region. In order to maintain printer throughput, suchcustomizing of magazine instances is often performed as a post printingcollation step. Typically documents such as magazines are printed onlarge sheets containing 8 sheets of magazine content.

9.5.2 Phase A-1

FIG. 54 shows the required changes to the standard publishing model inorder to support phase A-1 netpage functionality. While the changes maylook significant it is important to realize that most of the work isperformed automatically by the netpage system without the need foraction from the publisher. The only changes in the FIG. 54 that arevisible to the publisher are:

-   -   The finished document (e.g. PDF) must be submitted to the        netpage service, and    -   The invisible tag pattern generated for each page by the netpage        system must be incorporated into the offset printing process as        a separate infrared ink layer.

The netpage system automatically takes care of the process of preparinga document for interactive use. As shown in the FIG. 54, the mainservices provided by the netpage system for phase A-1 are:

-   -   Archiving of the document's visual layout. This allows the        service to support content extraction and text search        operations.    -   The allocation of unique page identifiers to each page within        the source document and the generation of a corresponding        document which contains a full page netpage infrared tag pattern        corresponding to each page in the source document. Each such        page encodes the unique page identifier and an (x,y) coordinate        grid within the tag pattern.    -   Automated detection of printed URIs in the source document and        creation of corresponding interactivity markup to allow pointer        devices to interact with those URIs.

The most significant change that is visible to the publisher/printer isactually not shown in FIG. 54. That is that the printing processrequires the addition of two printing units (assuming double sidedprinting) for printing the infrared tag layer. Further, the ink used inother units must use an ink formulation that does not interfere with theinfrared layer. That generally means that the black ink must bespecially selected to be infrared transparent.

9.5.3 Phase A-2

In Phase A-2 (see FIG. 55) the publishing process is augmented with astage in which the completed artwork is enhanced by the manualspecification of interactivity markup to be associated with zones withinthe document. A common example is that a URI can be associated with azone within a page. Zones are commonly rectangular, but may take anyshape. The interactivity markup is archived by the netpage service andis then available to the service's interaction interpretation processingas already described above. For example, a click within a zone with anassociated URI may be interpreted as a request to display the URI in theuser's web browser.

A specialized tool may be used for allowing publishers to perform themanual document post processing. The graphical tool will present thevisual layout of the document and allow the user to drag out zones andassociate interactivity markup with them. It is also conceivable thattools such as Adobe Acrobat could be used for the purpose.

Automated A-1 style post processing of the document is included in phaseA-2, and all subsequent phases. Phase A-1 provides automatedfunctionality that is useful for all phases.

9.5.4 Phase A-3

FIG. 56 shows the phase A-3 publishing process. In this phase the visuallayout authoring stage (stage 1) of earlier phases has been replaced bya stage in which both the document's visual layout and interactivity aredefined together. This stage allows for extensive interactivity to beauthored into the document, similar to the production of static webcontent where the visual layout and hyperlinks are generally authored atthe same time.

Automated phase A-1 and manual phase A-2 style post processing of thedocument is still possible for phase A-3 and may be particularly usefulduring a transitional period to phase A-3 in which only parts of adocument may contain phase A-3 style explicitly created interactivity.

9.5.5 Phase D-1

Phase D-1 requires the introduction of digital printing as a replacementfor traditional offset printing. That allows for the visual layout andassociated netpage interactivity of individual printed instances of adocument to differ from other printed instances of that same document.In phase D-1, that flexibility is used to allow printed documents tovary either continuously (i.e. semi-randomly) or by region or both. Thefirst is generally used for advertising and allows the publisher to selldifferent percentages of a certain advertisement space to differentadvertisers, while the second allows for content and advertisements tovary geographically.

The advantages of such targeted content and advertisements are twofold.Firstly, it is likely to encourage more reading and more netpageactivity per user. Secondly, it allows the advertising space to be soldmore efficiently and allows for arbitrary division of the advertisingspace including opening up printed advertising to smaller advertisers.Both advantages lead to a more valuable advertising space for thepublisher.

FIG. 57 provides some details of how such document publishing works. Ituses the specific example of targeted advertising being inserted intootherwise identical documents. The initial authoring process produces atemplate document that contains the visual layout and interactivitymarkup for all non-variable parts of the document. It also containsnamed placeholders for the areas within the document which are to varyper printout or group of printouts. See, for example, the rectangularareas labelled “A” in the FIG. 57. The actual printing takes place on alarge format digital printer. In order to be able to maintain theprinting speeds required on such printers, the integration of dynamiccontent actually takes place inside the printer itself. For similarreasons, the creation of the required infrared tag patterns also occurswithin the printer. The resultant data (visual layout, interactivitymarkup, and netpage page IDs) are then communicated to the netpageservice at some stage.

The phase D-1 process results in numerous document instances which areall unique and yet have a large amount of layout and interactivitymarkup in common. Such commonality can be leveraged to reduce thestorage and computing requirements of the overall system. For the sakeof simplicity, such sharing has not been shown in FIG. 57.

9.5.6 Phase D-2

Phase D-2 enhances phase D-1 by adding support for personalizedadvertisements and content. It requires subscriber addressing to beperformed at the time of printing and for targeting of advertisements(and possibly content) based on models of individual subscribers. Suchpersonalization can take into account the subscriber's location(minimally zip code), subscriber demographics such as age, sex,interests, income, education, and occupation, and can even includepersonalized content that is only included in that specific subscriber'sdocument instance. An example of the latter might include a partiallypre-filled-in form for renewing the subscriber's subscription, or abirthday greeting.

A document can consist of visual layout (and associated interactivitymarkup) that is derived from a combination of all of the previouslydescribed phases. For example, the one printed document may have somecontent which is the same for all instances (e.g. a global news story ornationwide full page advertisement), other parts which have beenincluded due to regional considerations (local news story oradvertisement for local merchant), still other content which is based onaspects of the reader's demographics (e.g. story or advertisementtargeted at young parents), and finally some content which is tailoredspecifically to that user (e.g. subscription form as already described).

9.5.7 Phase D-3

Phase D-3 is defined by the use of personal digital printing whichallows:

-   -   Documents to be printed on demand by the user and to be        individually tailored at that time for that specific user.    -   Providing basic (i.e. phase A-1) netpage functionality such as        content extraction, and text search, and printed URI support, to        any document printed by that user from any application.

9.6 Consumer Use Cases

With the above-described architecture in place, a number of usefulfunctions for the consumer can be envisaged, depending on the type ofinteraction and how the system is specifically implemented.

9.6.1 Key to Figures

FIG. 43 provides a key to the use case diagrams in the followingsections. Each diagram shows a click-through from a printed page to aweb page displayed in a web browser, and possibly click-throughs fromthe web page to further web pages.

The web site optionally indicates its owner (in brackets). The absenceof an explicit owner indicates that the web page is served by thenetpage provider.

A circled “opt” indicates the presence of various options availablealongside the web page, e.g. presented as hyperlinks or as soft keys.Some of these options may be shown explicitly in expanded form below thedisplay (“option 1”, “option 2”, etc.).

An optional reference name in a box on the corner of the displayprovides a name by which the web page can be referred to elsewhere.

9.6.2 Advertisement Linking

A printed advertisement may be promoting a brand or a specific product.Its purpose may be to build brand awareness in the consumer, e.g. toinfluence future purchasing decisions, or its purpose may be to call theconsumer to action, e.g. to engage the consumer in further dialogue(e.g. via a phone call or a web site), or to actually trigger apurchase.

The advertiser normally has a web site which is identified by a URI inthe ad. In some cases the web site is well aligned with the ad, e.g. itprovides additional detail on the product(s) described in the ad and mayfacilitate purchasing by identifying merchants or supporting onlineordering. In many cases, however, the web site does not assist theconsumer in purchasing the product(s).

By making a printed ad interactive the netpage system can provide theadvertiser with several benefits. It can make it much easier for theconsumer to reach the brand owner's web site, since they don't need tomanually launch a web browser and transcribe the URI. The netpage systemcan measure the click-through rate (CTR), allowing the advertiser togauge the effectiveness of the ad. This may be supplemented withdemographic information, either per transaction or in aggregate, whenthe system knows such information and is able to share it. Eachclick-through provides the advertiser with an opportunity to furtherengage with the consumer, and has the potential to be converted into asale.

The CTR of a given printed ad may remain relatively low even afternetpage use becomes commonplace. Unlike a small-format online ad, suchas a sponsored link displayed alongside Google search results, alarge-format print ad already achieves much of its purpose simply bybeing seen. The absolute CTR of an ad is therefore not necessarily ofprimary interest to the advertiser. Instead, the advertiser may be moreinterested in comparing the CTRs of different ads to help fine-tune anad campaign. The CTR of an ad can also be compared with the CTR of themagazine as a whole, since this gives a more realistic indication of thead's potential CTR than the number of ad impressions printed.

Because many brand owners are not well placed to directly supportpurchasing, one of the major services the netpage system can offer to abrand owner is to connect consumers who click on their ad with merchantswho sell their product(s). The system therefore provide product searchfunctions that can identify online merchants for products sold online,and local merchants for products sold through stores. The netpage systemmay provide product search as part of an online shopping service. Thenetpage system may allow the consumer to select their favourite productsearch (and shopping) service, so long as it has a revenue-sharingarrangement with that service. Product search can operate on either aproduct description or a product code. Product search and shopping isdiscussed in more detail elsewhere.

By providing added value to the advertiser, the advertising space ismade more valuable and therefore provides added value to the publisher.

In addition, product search provides a source of revenue which isindependent of ad revenue. A merchant may be required to pay a fee whentheir listing appears in search results, or when the consumer clicks ontheir listing, or when the consumer completes a purchase. Product searchrevenue can be shared between the netpage provider, the publisher, andpossibly the advertiser. In the latter case the advertiser iseffectively receiving a rebate on any ad which captures profitableclick-throughs.

There are several ways of linking an ad to both the brand owner's website and to product search:

(1) The entire ad may be linked to the brand owner's web site, butframed in such a way that the netpage system can provide ads andadditional options, such as product search, independently of the brandowner. Framing is a technique where the framed web site functions as ifit were displayed alone in the web browser, but is in fact displayedalongside other content. This option is illustrated in FIG. 44.

(2) The brand owner's web site and product search may be framed so thatthey are presented together.

(3) The entire ad may be linked to product search, and provide a linkfrom the product search page to the brand owner's web site.

(4) The brand owner's web site may be linked from just part of the ad,such as the printed URI, and the rest of the ad may be linked to productsearch. This may be preferable, since not all web sites are friendly toframing

(5) A set of on-screen options may be provided that allow the consumerto choose between the brand owner's web site, product search, localproduct search, etc. This approach is preferable when the screen issmall, such as on a mobile device, but may be useful more generally. Itis illustrated in FIG. 45.

(6) The user may be allowed to specify, as a preference, howclick-throughs are routed.

(7) The user can use device controls (e.g. buttons), or gestures, tochoose between options.

9.6.3 Embedded Product References

In many cases the editorial content of a magazine will refer to specificproducts. Product reviews are an obvious example. It would be desirableto provide the consumer with the convenience of linking from suchproduct references to further information online, as well as theopportunity to make a purchase. The netpage system should preferablyalso capture corresponding click-through fees and sales commissions.

Whereas in the case of advertising netpages are obliged to link to thebrand owner's web site in some way, in the case of product referencesthe netpage system is free to link directly to generic productinformation, or a shopping service, or product search, i.e. the systemis free to provide linking which maximises value to the consumer, to thepublisher, and to the netpage provider. Linking can be based on aproduct code, on a product description, or a set of keywords.

Amazon provides a good example of an online shopping service which couldbe linked from a printed product reference. Amazon's collection ofservices, including in-depth product info, recommendations, ratings,samples, and shopping, serves the consumer well. Amazon also pays salescommissions to sites that provide sales leads. Netpages may allow theconsumer to select their favourite shopping service, so long as thenetpage provider a revenue-sharing arrangement with that service.Linking to shopping services may be on on a per product category basis,since different services specialise in different product categories.

Note that, unlike the product search functions referred to elsewhere inthis specification, Amazon's product search is typically among differentproducts, not among different merchants.

As shown in FIG. 44, whatever the product reference is linked todirectly, the netpage system can frame this so ads and additionaloptions are provided in the same way as discussed in relation toadvertisements in the previous section.

When editorial content refers to a product of a fairly unique nature,such as a particular item of clothing or an accessory, it typically alsoidentifies a particular merchant for that product and provides contactdetails and a web site URI. In such cases it is appropriate to use thatURI as a source of online product information.

9.6.4 Product Self References

Every product item encodes a machine-readable reference to its ownproduct class via its UPC/EAN bar code. With RFID and Hyperlabel™tagging (see, for example, U.S. application Ser. Nos. 10/409,876 filedon Apr. 9, 2003; and 10/815,647 filed on Apr. 2, 2004, the contents ofwhich are herein incorporated by reference), this extends to the productitem's serial number via the item's EPC. To distinguish between a selfreference and general interactivity on a Hyperlabel™ tagged product itemit may be convenient to designate the traditional linear bar code as theself reference region, or, once the bar code becomes obsolete, toprovide a special self-reference region with a standard icon.

The netpage sensing device 101 can be used to scan a UPC/EAN bar code,and can capture an EPC from a Hyperlabel tagged item via a single click.As shown in FIG. 44, by handling a product self reference in the sameway an embedded product reference is handled in general, the netpagesystem can deliver and capture much of the same value.

Depending on the target, linking can either be based on the productcode, or on a product description or keywords derived from the productcode.

There are two common situations where a consumer scans a product code:(1) when doing comparison shopping in a retail store; and (2) whenadding a used-up grocery item to a shopping list. By allowing theconsumer to select different services for different product categories,the netpage system provides maximum flexibility and value.

9.6.5 Editorial Linking

A publisher can add value to the editorial content of a printpublication via a web site in several ways. The web site can containmore extensive information relating to a print article. It can providemore up-to-date information such as news. It can provide backgroundinformation to an article. And it can present related multimedia such asvideo and audio clips.

Many stories in print already contain at least one link, in the form ofan explicit URI, to related information online. The netpage system canlink the article explicitly to the web page identified by the URI. Theweb page may be framed so that it is displayed alongside relevant newsand ads (and further options), as shown in FIG. 46. If the print contentand online content have corresponding sections, then each print sectioncan link to its corresponding online section.

Ad selection is driven by keywords extracted from the immediate contextof the click, or from ad keywords associated with the entire article orwith the section in which the click occurred.

News selection is similarly driven by keywords extracted from theimmediate context of the click, or from news keywords associated withthe entire article or with the section in which the click occurred.

With widespread implementation of the netpage system it is likely thathyperlinks will proliferate in printed editorial content.

Note that editorial content is taken to include not just text but imagesand graphics as well.

9.6.6 Product Discovery

Editorial content in general and images in particular provide anopportunity for product discovery. Where an implicit product referencecan be identified in an image or text the netpage system can link it toproduct information and/or product search in any of the ways describedabove.

For example, if a particular brand or model of handbag is identified ina celebrity photo, the corresponding page description can tag thatregion of the photo with corresponding ad keywords and/or a productcode.

Even when the product reference is merely to a type of product, such asa handbag, rather than particular brand or model, the product type canstill be linked to product search.

9.6.7 Contextual Search

Contextual search helps provide the consumer with the most relevant anduseful information no matter where they click.

A contextual search may be performed whenever a user searches forinformation to display in response to a click, such as the ads displayedalongside other information, or the news displayed below editorialcontent. In general, when the netpage system displays online information“linked” to printed information, there is a continuum between thatinformation being statically linked and being discovered dynamically viacontextual search.

The consumer may also explicitly initiate a contextual search onarbitrary content, as described in Section 9.4.2.

The search query minimally corresponds to the word designated by theclick (or possibly multiple words in the case of an underlining strokeor lasso). The query may be augmented with information from the spatialor logical document context of the click to improve the precision orcompleteness of the search results:

(1) The page server may recognise that the designated word is part of amulti-word term, e.g. by dictionary lookup or prior markup.(2) The page server may append additional keywords to the query, basedon category-specific keywords associated with a word, phrase, line,sentence, paragraph, section, article, etc. of the document.(3) The page server may incorporate document meta-data, such aslanguage, in the query.(4) The page server may determine the partial semantics (e.g. part ofspeech) or full semantics of the designated word or phrase from itscontext, and incorporate this in the query (and similarly determine thesemantics of the content being searched).(5) A click may also designate an image or graphic, in which case thequery is constructed from keywords and/or concepts associated with theimage or graphic, or with the region thereof containing the click.(6) Beyond the document context of the click, the query may be furtheraugmented with information from the environmental context and usercontext. The environmental context can include geographic location, timeof day, day of week, date, weather, etc. The user context can includehome location, language, demographic, click history, search history,preferences, etc.

9.6.8 Explicit Contextual Search

Explicit contextual search provides the consumer with useful informationindependent of the usual editorial (or ad) context of the publication.

To provide the consumer with a useful collection of information inresponse to an explicit contextual search, the netpage system may usethe query to search the general web (e.g. using Google), as well as anencyclopedia (e.g. Wikipedia), news (e.g. using Google news), andcombine the results in a single page as shown in FIG. 47. Relevant adsmay be displayed alongside the search results. Answers.com, for example,performs similar aggregation of search results from disparate sources.

Where appropriate, the target of an explicit contextual search can belimited to a closed or constrained domain. For example, a contextualsearch of the fine print of a pharmaceutical ad may target authoritativeinformation rather than the open web.

If a netpage sensing device has two modes (e.g. via a two-positionfinger switch or a finger switch and a nib switch), then one mode can bededicated to contextual search, and the contextual search can ignorehyperlinks (e.g. allowing the text of a hyperlink to be the subject ofcontextual search), and the other mode can be dedicated to explicit andimplicit hyperlinking, as described above. If a sensing device has onlyone mode, then hyperlinking can take precedence over contextual searchwherever there is an explicit hyperlink, with contextual searchoperative everywhere else. Alternatively, contextual search can bepresented as a screen option alongside other options such as implicithyperlinking. Alternatively still, the results of implicit hyperlinkingcan be combined with the results of contextual search.

9.6.9 Content Extraction

Content extraction provides a convenient mechanism for the consumer toshare or re-purpose printed content. The consumer can use their sensingdevice to designate, via a click, a printed object such as an image orpiece of text. They can also designate an arbitrary region on a printedpage via a lasso gesture. In either case they can subsequently paste theselected content into a desktop application such as a word processor, asunformatted or formatted text, as a raw selection or a logical selection(paragraph, section, article, page, document, etc.), as an image, etc.;record the selected content in a scrapbook; e-mail the selected contentto a friend; etc. The selected content optionally preserves any embeddednetpage interactivity, and thereby continues to support revenue-earningclick-throughs.

9.6.10 Bookmarking

When the consumer is operating their netpage sensing device offline,either due to lack of connectivity or because it is inconvenient tointeract with a relay device, the netpage system can continue to capturetheir netpage interactions so that it can deliver the value of thoseinteractions at a more convenient time. Interactions can be captured aspassive bookmarks or as more active click-throughs, or as a mixture ofthe two depending on context.

9.6.11 Charging Models for Editorial and Advertisement Linking

As described Section 9.6.5 above, and as illustrated in FIG. 63, a usercan interact with the editorial content of a printed publication to linkto a related web site, or to initiate an online search. Linking can bevia an explicit printed hyperlink, or via a more general interactionwith a printed article.

Whether linking to a web site or initiating an online search, adsrelated to the content of the printed publication and/or to the contentof the linked web site can be displayed alongside the linked web site orsearch results.

The user can subsequently click on one of the displayed ads to enter thecorresponding merchant's web site, and can then complete an onlinepurchase if desired.

The merchant may be willing to pay a fee when its ad displayed, and/orwhen the user clicks on the ad to enter the merchant's site, and/or whenthe user completes a purchase.

In order to maximise the likelihood that the user will click on an ad,the advertiser can specify criteria according to which the ad should beplaced. Criteria may be based on the context of the original interactionbetween the user and the printed publication, as well as characteristicsof the user (such as demographic) and the user's environment (such aslocation).

As described in Section 9.6.2 above, and as illustrated in FIG. 64, auser can also interact with the advertising content of a printedpublication to link to a brand or product web site, or to initiate anonline product search. Product searches can also be initiated fromproduct references embedded in editorial content, such as productreviews. Linking can be via an explicit printed hyperlink, or via a moregeneral interaction with a printed ad.

FIG. 65 shows the interaction between various entities as a result ofthe basic interaction shown in FIG. 63.

The publisher 2000 is the publisher of the print publication that theuser 2002 is interacting with. The publisher 2000 provides the editorialsetting for user interactions that lead to the display of online ads,and so may deserve a share of click-through and sales commissionrevenue.

The device issuer 2004 is the issuer of the sensing device 101 that theuser 2002 is using to interact with the print publication. The sensingdevice may be a clicker, pointer or pen, or one of these incorporatedinto a PDA or mobile phone. The device typically incorporates a uniqueuser or device identifier (e.g. pen ID 61) that it inserts ininteraction data that it generates, thereby allowing the device issuerto be identified from device interaction data. The device or useridentifier may also be inserted in interaction data by an intermediaterelay device 601 such as a mobile phone. The device issuer 2004 mayprovide the sensing device 101 to the user for free, or at least belowcost, and so may deserve a share of click-through and sales commissionrevenue.

Similarly, the user 2002 may have invested in purchasing the printpublication and/or the sensing device, so may deserve a share ofclick-through and sales commission revenue.

An online advertiser 2006 is a source of online ads, and is typically amerchant wishing to drive traffic to its web site.

An ad aggregator 2008 acts as an intermediary between advertisers 2006and publishers 2000, aggregating both ads and advertising space. Anonline ad aggregator typically allows advertisers to bid for online adplacement, automatically places ads by matching specified placementcriteria to the display context, and automatically charges theadvertiser for actual ad placements and/or click-throughs.

A content provider 2010 provides online content that the printpublication may link to directly or via search. The print publisher mayalso provide online content. The online content provider 2010 may alsobe a search provider such as Google.

The system provider 2012 may provide the netpage web server 201, whichblends linked content or search results with online ads. The systemprovider 2012 and the ad aggregator 2008 can be a single entity, or theycan be separate entities that cooperate to serve appropriate ads andmediate ad click-throughs. The system provider may make use of more thanone ad aggregator.

The system provider 2012 typically mediates ad click-throughs to enableit to charge the advertiser 2006 (either directly or via an adaggregator 2008).

FIG. 65 shows an online advertiser 2006 placing an ad with an adaggregator 2008. As described in Section 9.7 below, the ad placement maybe part of an ad campaign and subject to a campaign-specific (oroverall) budget. The ad placement has an associated cost model, i.e.cost per thousand (CPM) or cost per click (CPC), and a cost agreedbetween the advertiser 2006 and the aggregator 2008, typically as partof a competitive bidding process. When the aggregator 2008 places the adit not only respects the ad's placement criteria, it also respects theadvertiser's remaining ad budget(s).When the user 2002 interacts with the printed publication, the sensingdevice transmits interaction data to the system provider 2012. Theinteraction data identifies the publication (and hence the publisher2000); typically a location within the publication; the device itselfand/or the user 2002; and a user action (either via a device mode,button state, or interaction gesture). The user action may also dependon the content of the publication, including its interactivity markup.

As discussed in Section 9.1, the system provider 2012 may operate both adocument/page service, for interpreting the user's interaction data andgenerating a request (including context data) for a blended web page,and a portal service, for serving the blended web page.

The system provider 2012 communicates with one or more content providersand ad aggregators to retrieve content and ads to create a blended webpage to display to the user. Each online ad incorporates a hyperlink tothe corresponding merchant web site.

The system provider 2012 can at this point charge the advertiser an adplacement fee if the ad placement cost model is CPM. This chargingtransaction is not shown in FIG. 65, but can occur in the same way asdescribed for a click-through fee below.

When the user 2002 clicks on a hyperlink in an online ad, the systemprovider 2012 mediates the click in order to gain visibility of theclick-through and thereby charge the advertiser a click-through fee. Thesystem provider 2012 forwards the web page request to the advertiser2006 (i.e. merchant), who in turn serves the web page to the user 2002.

The system provider 2012 can at this point charge the advertiser aclick-through fee if the ad placement cost model is CPC. The systemprovider 2012 can charge the advertiser 2006 indirectly by charging thead aggregator (debit 1) and having the ad aggregator charge theadvertiser (debit 2). Alternatively the system provider 2012 can chargethe advertiser 2006 directly (not shown), particularly if the systemprovider and the ad aggregator are the same entity.

The system provider 2012 may credit the online content provider 2010,device issuer 2004, user 2002 and/or publisher 2000 with a proportion ofthe click-through fee or placement fee (credits 3, 4, 5 and 6respectively).

FIG. 66 also shows the interaction between various entities as a resultof the basic interaction shown in FIG. 63, but including the user 2002completing a purchase via the merchant web site.

The interaction proceeds as described above in relation to FIG. 65, upto and including the point where the merchant web page is displayed tothe user 2002.

The system provider 2012 may still charge the advertiser a placement feeor click-through fee as described above, and credit other participants.This is not shown in FIG. 66.

When the user 2002 completes a purchase via the merchant web site, themerchant may credit the system provider with a sales commission (credit7). Amazon is an example of a merchant that routinely pays salescommissions to other web sites that refer leads (via click-throughs). Inthe present case the system provider, since it mediates the originalclick-through to the merchant web site, acts as the referring web site.The mediator of the click, i.e. the system provider, identifies itselfto the merchant via a parameter in the URI.

The system provider 2012 can then share a proportion of the salescommission with other participating entities such as the online contentprovider 2010, device issuer 2004, user 2002 and/or publisher 2000(credits 8, 9, 10 and 11 respectively).

Although not shown in FIG. 65 or FIG. 66, the system provider 2012 mayalso credit an author of (or holder of rights to) the specific printedcontent of the publication that the user is interacting with, or theonline content displayed in response to the user interaction.

Debits and credits need not, in general, be transmitted between entitieswith the same granularity as click-throughs. The system provider 2012may accumulate debits in the ad aggregator's, advertiser's andmerchant's accounts, and credits in the user's, publisher's, deviceissuer's and content provider's accounts, as shown in Section 9.7.

Where the context of the user interaction is a print advertisement, asshown in FIG. 64, the system provider 2012 can choose to credit theprint advertiser with a proportion of online ad placement fees,click-through fees and/or sales commissions arising from theinteraction. The print advertiser effectively plays the role of thepublisher (or author), since it has authored the print ad and has paidfor its placement. This provides a mechanism for providing the printadvertiser with a rebate on the original print ad placement fee, inrecognition of online fees earned by the system provider via the printad. Alternatively, the print advertiser may be charged a click-throughfee.

When the user interaction initiates a product search, as shown in FIG.64, the resulting web page typically contains both merchant links andonline ads. These can both be treated as online ads for the purpose ofcharging, as described above in relation to placement fees,click-through fees and sales commissions. However, their individualtreatment may differ. For example, it is typical to charge click-throughfees on online ads but sales commissions on sales arising fromclick-throughs on merchant listings.

As an alternative to the system provider 2012 crediting the printadvertiser with an effective rebate, the print advertiser can insteadplay the role of the system provider, with respect to both online addisplay and product search, by bypassing the system provider and fullylinking the print ad to its own web presence.

The publisher 2000, or an entity associated with the publisher, can alsoplay the role of the system provider for the purposes of serving blendedcontent, mediating user interactions and collecting and sharing adrevenue.

9.7 Object Model for Searching and Portal Linking

In Sections 1.3 and 1.7, there was described an object model for atypical netpage document 836. There is now described in detail acorresponding object model, further elaborated to illustrate support forkeyword, concept and contextual searching. The skilled person willreadily appreciate where the object models correspond and whereenhancements have been made.

9.7.1 Document

As illustrated in FIG. 67, a document 836 consists of a set of documentelements 837 arranged into both a logical structure and a physicalstructure. The logical structure consists of an arbitrary hierarchy ofgroups 838, allowing structures such as articles 507, advertisements1105 and forms 867 to be represented (see FIG. 68). The physicalstructure consists of a sequence of numbered pages 1100, each with anassociated page description 5 specifying the placement of documentelements 837. Since a single document element 837 may span a number ofpages 1100, it may have a corresponding number of formatted pageelements 835, each defining the position and extent (i.e. zone 58) of afragment of the document element.

A page 1100 may also use a page template 1101 that contains recurringelements such as headers and footers.

As illustrated in FIG. 69, a zone 58 consists of one or more closedregions 1107 defined in the page description 5 for a page 1100. Theoutline of a closed region 1107 may be defined by a rectangle 1108 or apolygon 1109, or more smoothly by a polyspline 1110 (e.g. a set of cubicBezier spline segments).

Document elements 837 include visual elements 843, region elements 1103,and field elements 845. Visual elements 843 represent textflows 848,images 849, graphics 850 etc. (see FIGS. 70 and 15). Region elementsrepresent arbitrary regions to which information can be attached andwithin which user input can be interpreted in a particular way. Fieldelements 845 represent fields for capturing

user input such as handwriting on paper, or text input on the screen(see FIGS. 71 and 21). They are typically arranged into multi-fieldforms.

A document element 837 optionally has an associated link 844 thatidentifies an associated resource, such as a Web page or onlineapplication, via a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). The resource istypically retrieved and displayed when the user interacts with the zone58 of a page element 835 associated with the document element, i.e. theentire document element 837 acts as a hyperlink to the externalresource.

A form is associated with a target application via a link 844. Thetarget application receives a submission of that form when a submitfield of the form is activated. When form fields accept handwriting,gesture and handwriting recognition are performed as necessary beforeform submission.

As already described with reference to FIG. 37, a styled text object 855may be decomposed into a set of styled paragraphs 1012, styled words1014 and styled characters 1016.

As illustrated in FIG. 72, a styled text object 855 may comprise amarked-up text element 1111 having inline text markup. Inline textmark-up 1112 may include inline structural markup 1114, style markup1115, link markup 1116 and semantic markup 1117. Markup can also beapplied to arbitrary character sequences 1113, and may be nested.

Structural markup 1114 may specify headings 1118, sections 1119, etc.Style markup 1115 may specify font family 1120, size 1121, angle,weight, color, etc. Link markup 1116 may specify links 844 etc. Semanticmarkup 1117 typically contains a reference to a subject description1120, which may specify the meaning of individual terms through to thesubject matter of entire sections. Semantic markup 1117 may also containa reference to a resource description 842.

As illustrated in FIG. 73, the content and layout of most printedmatter, including books, magazines, newspapers, inserts, direct mail,brochures, catalogs, posters and fill-in forms, can be described by adocument 836. The same is true of much digital content, including webpages.

9.7.2 Resource Description

As illustrated in FIG. 74, content objects 840, documents 836,publications 1127, etc., are referred to more abstractly as resources1128.

A resource 1128 may have an associated resource description 842 whichprovides information about the resource and its content.

A resource description 842 provides information about a resource 1128via a resource description term 1126 to enable content discovery. Asillustrated in FIG. 75, a resource description term 1126 may include atitle term 1126 a identifying the name or title of a resource, a creatorterm 1126 b identifying the creator(s) or author entity 1130, a subjectterm 1126 c identifying the subject description 1120 of its content, adescription term 1126 d identifying a human-readable description of itscontent, a publisher term 1126 e identifying a publisher entity 1131, acontributor term 1126 f identifying its contributors or author 1130, adate term 1126 g identifying one or more dates in its lifecycle, a typeterm 1126 h identifying the nature or type of its content, a format term1127 i identifying its physical or digital format, an identifier term1126 j providing an unambiguous identifier for the resource 1128, asource term 1126 k identifying references to parent or source resources1128, a language term 11261 identifying the language of its content, arelation term 1126 m identifying references to related resources 1128, acoverage term 1126 n identifying a subject description 1120 and thecoverage or scope of its content (including the spatial or temporaltopic of the content), and a rights term 1126 o identifying a rightsholder entity 1129 and any rights held in or over the resource (e.g.copyright), a portal.

The elements described here are based on the Dublin Core MetadataInitiative (DCMI) element set [Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, DCMIMetadata Terms, http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms, the contentsof which is herein incorporated by reference]. Many additional elementsmay also be defined in accordance with the DCMI element set.

A resource description 842 may also identify a portal specification 1132and search specifications 1133 (via a corresponding portal specreference term 1126 p and search spec reference term 1126 q) to assistwith navigation from the resource to related online resources.

A subject description 1120 provides specific information about thecontent of a resource.

As illustrated in FIG. 76, a subject description 1120 consists of a setof subject description terms 1144. A term 1145 has a weight whichindicates how strongly it represents the content in relation to otherterms in the description 1120.

A keyword term 1146 specifies a word or multi-word term. It supportscontent discovery via lexical matching. A keyword 1146 may be augmentedwith a supersense 1147, i.e. a conceptual classification, to imbue itwith partial semantics [Ciaramita, M., and M. Johnson, “SupersenseTagging of Unknown Nouns in WordNet”, Proceedings of the 2003 Conferenceon Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, 2003, pp. 168-175,the contents of which is herein incorporated by reference].

A concept term 1148 specifies a concept 1149 within an ontology. Itsupports content discovery via semantic matching, supporting greaterprecision and recall than lexical matching. A concept term 1148identifies, either implicitly or explicitly (e.g. via a URI), theontology within which it is defined.

As illustrated in FIG. 77, an ontology 1150 provides a systematiccategorization of the concepts 1149 in a field of knowledge via semanticrelations 1151 between those concepts. The W3C's Web Ontology Language(OWL) and Resource Description Framework (RDF) support the definition ofontologies [see W3C, Web Ontology Language http://wWW.w3.org/2004/OWL,and Resource Description Framework (RDF), http://www.w3.org/RDF, thecontents of which are herein incorporated by reference].

As illustrated in FIG. 78, a lexicon 1152, which relates words to wordsenses, defines a kind of ontology by defining concepts 1149 via sets ofsynonyms as well as via semantic relations such as antonymy (opposites),hypernymy/hyponymy (genericity/specificity), holonymy/meronymy (nounwhole/part), and troponymy (verb manner specificity). As shown in FIG.78 a concept 1149 may comprise a noun concept 1153, an adjective concept1154, an adverb concept 1155 or a verb concept 1156. WordNet is a goodexample of such a lexicon [see Princeton University Cognitive ScienceLaboratory, WordNet—a lexical database for the English language,http://wordnet.princeton.edu/ and Miller, G. A., C. Leacock, R. Tengi,and R. T. Bunker, “A Semantic Concordance”, Proceedings of the Workshopon Human Language Technology, Princeton, N.J., 1993, pp. 303-308, thecontents of which are herein incorporated by reference].

FIG. 79 illustrates a common set of useful specialisations of the nounconcept 1153.

A portal specification 1132 is used to assist with navigation to aportal capable of serving blended information associated with a resource1128. As illustrated in FIG. 80, a portal specification 1132 mayidentify, via a portal specification term 1202, a portal template URI1134 for making requests to the portal. The portal template URI 1134typically provides a parameter slot for the URI of a primary resource tobe served, as part of a blend, by the portal. The primary resource istypically identified by a link 844 associated with a document element837. The portal template URI 1134 may also provide parameter slots fornews subject descriptions, ad subject descriptions (etc.) for news andads (etc.) to be included in the blend.

A portal specification 1132 may identify the portal more abstractly viaan identifier 1135 (which may be a URI). Resolving the portal identifier1135 to a portal template URI 1134 at runtime allows the portal templateURI to evolve over time.

A search specification 1133, is used to assist with navigation to asearch engine capable of serving search results in response to searchesfrom the content of a resource. As illustrated in FIG. 81, a searchspecification 1132 can identify a search template URI 1136 for makingrequests to the search engine. The search template URI 1136 typicallyprovides a parameter slot for a query.

A search specification 1133 may identify the search engine moreabstractly via an identifier 1137 (which may be a URI). Resolving thesearch engine identifier 1137 to a search template URI 1136 at runtimeallows the search template URI to evolve over time.

A search specification 1133 may identify, via a search specificationterm 1204, a specific search domain 1138. This may simply be an internetdomain name, or a subject domain known to a particular search engine.The domain is typically passed to the search engine via a parameter slotin the search template URI 1136.

A search specification 1133 may identify a subject description 1120above and beyond any subject description derivable from the content ofthe resource, e.g. to trigger the placement of particular ads.

As illustrated in FIG. 82, a resource description 842 may include searchspecification terms 1204 for general-purpose (e.g. encyclopedic)searches 1139, news searches 1140 (e.g. for the purpose of portalblending), and ad searches 1141 (e.g. for the purpose of portalblending).

9.7.3 Environment Description

The user's environment provides a useful source of context during aquery.

As illustrated in FIG. 83, an environment description 1160 providesinformation about the user's environment, including geographic location1161, date 1162, time 1163, weather 1164, etc.

As illustrated in FIG. 84, geographic location 1165 may be specified viaabsolute coordinates 1142, or via a place concept 1143 in an availableontology.

Absolute coordinates may be obtained from a GPS receiver incorporatedinto the user's pointer device 101 or relay device 601, or from themobile network. A place name or place concept 1143 may be obtained fromthe mobile network, or may be specified by the user manually.

9.7.4 User Description

The user also provides a useful source of context during a query.

As illustrated in FIG. 85, a user description 1166 provides informationabout the user entity 1167, including home location 1168, demographic1169, interests 1170, language 1172, etc.

A user description 1166 can also contain a history 1171 of recentsubjects explored by the user, accumulated during previous browsing andclick-throughs.

A user description 1166 is available when the user entity 1167 is bothknown to the system and identified, e.g. via the identity of the user'spointer 101 or relay device 601, at the time a query is issued.

9.7.5 Query

A query expresses a set of conditions that a document (or ad placement)must meet to be considered a match during a search.

As illustrated in FIG. 86, a query consists of a query expression 1173which combines further sub-expressions and query terms 1178 via unaryand binary operators 1176 and 1177. Operators include boolean operators1179 as well as occurrence and proximity constraints 1180 and 1181, asillustrated in FIG. 87.

A query sub-expression has a weight which indicates how strongly itrepresents the query in relation to other sub-expressions in the query.

A query term 1178 can be any term from a resource description term 1126,subject description term 1144, environment description term 1174, anduser description term 1175. A query term 1178 can also refer directly toa document element 837 e.g. to allow ad placement in response to userinteraction with a document element 837.

9.7.6 Concordance

Conceptually, a query can be applied to each document directly. Inpractice, however, a concordance 1182 of document content is usuallyconstructed beforehand to allow efficient query processing, asillustrated in FIG. 88. If documents contain semantic markup or aresubjected to automatic semantic analysis, then a semantic concordance1182 can be built.

9.7.7 Advertiser and Ad

An advertiser entity 1184 may pay to place ads in a printed publicationor online web page, with placement being contingent on the context ofthe placement meeting certain criteria.

As illustrated in FIG. 89, an ad placement can specify arbitrarymatching criteria by way of a general query expression 1173. This allowsad placement criteria 1185 to specify terms relating to the user (suchas demographic or history), the environment (such as location orweather), and specific document elements. The latter allows anadvertiser to bid for ad placements in response to user interactions inarbitrary regions of a publication.

Ads may also be selected and ranked according to other criteria, such astheir performance to date, and advertisers' overall andcampaign-specific budgets and corresponding ad spending rates.

The overall and publication-specific click-through rates (CTRs) of an adallow the advertiser to judge the success of the ad, either in isolationor relative to other ads in the campaign. The CTRs of the publicationsin which the ad appears, aggregated from the CTRs of individual documentelements, provides the advertiser with an indication of the potentialCTR of an actual ad placement. Interaction statistics 2018 aremaintained on a per-user basis, e.g. to allow the total population ofinteracting users to be identified. User details need not be revealed toadvertisers.

9.7.8 Entity

An entity 1190 represents a person or organisation that plays some rolein the system.

As illustrated in FIG. 90, an entity 1190 has various details 1192 suchas a name, contact details, etc. An entity also has an account 1191which is used to debit expenses and credit income. When a user entity1167 clicks on an online ad, for example, the account of thecorresponding advertiser 1184 may be debited and the account of thecorresponding advertising aggregator 1193 may be credited (see Section9.6.11 for details of charging models).

The user optionally has a preferred portal specification and an orderedset of preferred search specifications which may be used in the absenceof document-specific portal and search specifications.

9.8 Contextual Document Search 9.8.1 Overview

The purpose of search is to discover documents relevant to the user'sintent.

Search can suffer from two related problems: low precision and lowrecall. Low precision results when documents of low relevance areincluded in the search results. These are often referred to as falsepositives. Low recall results when documents of high relevance areexcluded from the search results. These are often referred to as falsenegatives. Improving precision usually comes at the cost of reducingrecall. Improving recall usually comes at the cost of reducingprecision.

FIG. 91 shows the basic data flow during a contextual document search.

The user interacts with a printed page to initiate a search. The userinteraction, and hence the user input, typically designates one or morewords within a larger text. Search is usually an implicit side-effect ofthe user interaction.

The various steps are described in the following sections.

Both source and target documents are assumed to at least partially usethe document object model defined in Section 9.7.

9.8.2 Subject Description

Low precision generally results from ambiguity, either in relation to anindividual term or in relation to the user's overall intent. Termambiguity can be resolved by determining the sense of a term and thenincorporating that sense into the query. The sense of a term can bedetermined either by analysis of the context in which it appears, or byexplicitly defining it. As an example, if the user clicks on the word“jaguar” in a text, it is useful to know whether the word refers to ajaguar car or a jaguar animal. Overall user intent is indicated both bythe broader document context of the user interaction, as well as thehistory of the user's recent interactions. Both can be brought to bearduring a search.

Inline semantic markup can be used in several ways to resolve thisambiguity. The term can be disambiguated by being linked explicitly to aconcept in an ontology, e.g.:

-   -   “the Jaguar drives beautifully” can be marked up as “the        <concept value=“jaguar_automobile”>Jaguar</concept>drives        beautifully”    -   “the jaguar preys on small animals” can be marked up as “the        <concept value=“jaguar_animal”>jaguar</concept>preys on small        animals”.        The term can also be disambiguated using a context keyword,        e.g.:    -   “the Jaguar drives beautifully” can be marked up as “the        <keyword value=“automobile”>Jaguar</keyword>drives beautifully”    -   “the jaguar preys on small animals” can be marked up as “the        <keyword value=“animal”>jaguar</keyword>preys on small animals”.

This kind of disambiguation can also specified at a structural level inthe document. Descriptions such as these, whether specified at astructural level or via inline markup, can be created either manually orautomatically. Manual semantic tagging can be arbitrarily accurate, butscales relatively poorly (particularly for existing un-tagged content).However, since it is in the interests of authors to create discoverabledocuments, and since semantic tagging can be incorporated into futureauthoring tools, the proportion of semantically tagged content is likelyto increase. This is the purpose of efforts such as the W3C's SemanticWeb initiative [see W3C, Semantic Web, http://www.w3.org/2001/sw; W3C,Web Ontology Language (OWL), http://www.w3.org/2004/OWL; and Guha, R.,R. McCool, and E. Miller, “Semantic Search”, Proceedings of the 12^(th)International Conference on World Wide Web, Budapest, Hungary, 2003, pp.700-709, the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference].

Automated semantic tagging via text analysis is typically less accuratethan manual semantic tagging, but scales very well and is particularlyapplicable to existing un-tagged content. Given a lexicon and ontologysuch as WordNet, it is possible to determine with a fairly high degreeof certainty the correct sense of most terms in a text. In one approachthe text is processed linearly from start to finish, assigning a senseto each word or multi-word term in turn by minimising the semanticdistance of the term's sense from the senses of its immediate neighboursin the text [see Sussna, M., “Word Sense Disambiguation for Free-TextIndexing Using a Massive Semantic Network”, Proceedings of the SecondInternational Conference on Information and Knowledge Management,Washington, D.C., United States, 1993, pp. 67-74, the contents of whichis herein incorporated by reference].

For example, in the case of “the Jaguar drives beautifully”, the nearbyverb “drives” helps to assign a sense of <jaguar_automobile> to“Jaguar”, and in the case of “the jaguar preys on small animals”, thenearby verb “preys” and noun “animals” help to assign a sense of<jaguar_animal> to “jaguar”. Part of speech analysis [see Brill, E., “ASimple Rule-Based Part of Speech Tagger”, Proceedings of the Workshop onSpeech and Natural Language, Harriman, N.Y., USA, 1992, pp. 112-116, thecontents of which is herein incorporated by reference] and stop-wordremoval are performed before word sense disambiguation.

More complex semantic analysis is also possible, such as resolvingdirect and indirect anaphora [see Fan, J., K. Barker, and B. Porter,“Indirect Anaphora Resolution as Semantic Path Search”, Proceedings ofthe 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Capture, Banff, Alberta,Canada, 2005, pp. 153-160, the contents of which is herein incorporatedby reference]. For example, in the case of “the Jaguar drivesbeautifully; the 5.0 L V8 engine produces 370 hp”, it is useful to notonly resolve “engine” to <engine_automobile>, but also to identify itsantecedent <jaguar_automobile>.

Shallower semantic analysis is also possible, such as recognising partof speech, recognising named entities [see Guha, R., and R. McCool,“TAP: A Semantic Web Platform”, Computer Networks: The InternationalJournal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking, 42(5), August2003, pp. 557-577, Elsevier North-Holland and Mikheev, A., M. Moens, andC. Grover, “Named Entity Recognition without Gazetteers”, Proceedings ofthe Ninth Conference on European Chapter of the Association forComputational Linguistics, Bergen, Norway, 1999, pp. 1-8, the contentsof which are herein incorporated by reference], and recognising thesupersense of a noun.

When semantic tagging is performed after a document (or fragmentthereof, such as an ad) has been authored, region descriptions provide auseful alternative to structural tagging or inline markup. They alsoprovide a useful mechanism for tagging image-based and graphic documentcontent. For example, different elements within a photo of a celebrityon the red carpet can be tagged with different subject descriptions. Theoutline of the dress can be associated with a subject description thatidentifies the dress maker; the outline of the shoes can be associatedwith a subject description that identifies the brand and possibly thespecific product; etc. The overall image can be associated with adescription of the celebrity and the event, etc.

Low recall generally results from a mismatch between terms used todescribe the source document and terms used to describe targetdocuments. Semantic tagging therefore also serves to improve recall.

9.8.3 Query Generation

During query generation the primary search terms are first identified.These terms correspond to the words designated directly by the user onthe printed page.

If the user clicks on a word then only that word is included by default.If the user underlines, circles or otherwise designates multiple words,then all of those words are included.

Different gestures may be taken to indicate the literal and conceptualdesignation of multiple words respectively. In the literal case thewords are treated as a multi-word phrase, and stop words are retained.In the conceptual case the words are treated as representing multipleconcepts, and stop words are discarded. These different gestures mightconsist of underlining and circling, respectively, or striking throughand underlining, respectively, etc.

If any designated word or words are known to be part of a multi-wordterm, then that entire term is used in the query. There are several waysa multi-word term can be discovered.

The source text may include inline semantic markup which indicates thattwo or more adjacent words are part of a multi-word term, e.g.: “The<term>North Pole</term> is very cold”. The source document may includeor reference a lexicon which identifies or defines terms that appear inthe source text, including multi-word terms. Part-of-speech analysis canalso help identify multi-word terms, particularly in conjunction with anamed entity database. Named entity recognition can also succeed with alimited database. Partial or full semantic analysis can, in general, beperformed either beforehand and recorded as part of or alongside adocument, or can be performed during query generation.

If the source text includes inline semantic markup which associatessubject description terms with individual text terms, then those subjectdescriptions terms are used in place of the text terms if they arecompatible with the target documents being searched. Whether subjectdescription terms are used or not, their weights are available duringquery processing for ranking purposes.

After identifying the primary search terms a set of context terms isidentified to help improve query precision. Such context terms can beidentified in a number of ways. The source text itself can be analysedto extract a set of candidate context terms [see Kraft, R., “SearchSystems and Methods using In-Line Contextual Queries”, US PatentApplication US 2006/0026013, 2 Feb. 2006 and Kraft, R., F. Marghoul, andC. C. Chang, “Y!Q: Contextual Search at the Point of Inspiration”,Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Information andKnowledge Management, Bremen, Germany, 2005, pp. 816-823, the contentsof which are herein incorporated by reference]. This process canidentify multi-word terms in any of the ways described above. Structuralunits of the source document, such as sections, articles, etc., may haveassociated subject descriptions containing subject description terms.Context terms can be obtained from any structural unit that encloses thelocation of the primary search terms. Hierarchically closer structuralunits can be favoured over hierarchically more distant units, or theclosest unit with a subject description can be used exclusively.

Context terms can also be drawn from the environment context or usercontext. For example, the user's current or home location may provideuseful context as well as the user's recent interaction history.

A content region with a subject description can also be used as a sourceof context terms. If the query does not otherwise contain primary searchterms, e.g. if the content region describes part of an image, then thesubject description of the image region can also be used as a source ofprimary search terms.

Whenever context terms are obtained from subject description terms,terms that do not relate to the domain of the search (e.g. <news> versus<general search>) are ignored. Any term that lacks a domain qualifier istaken to relate to all domains.

9.8.4 Query Processing

During query processing the concordance is used to identify targetdocuments that match all of the primary search terms. Each such documentmay have a domain-specific ranking. Web pages, for example, are commonlyranked according to how often they are cited and the ranking of the websites that cite them. Matching target documents may be ranked accordingto the proximity and frequency of the primary search terms in thosedocuments, as well as by the weight of each primary search term, ifavailable.

For each matching document we determine which context terms it alsomatches. Target documents that match context terms are given a higherranking than target documents that don't. Matching target documents mayalso be ranked according to the proximity and frequency of the contextterms in those documents, as well as by the weight of each context term,if available.

Given a set of primary search terms {P0, P1, . . . , Pn} and a set ofcontext terms {C0, C1, . . . , Cm}, the query can be expressed as (P0AND P1 AND . . . AND Pn} AND {NULL OR C0 OR C1 OR . . . OR Cm}.

Full query semantics are defined in the object model in Section 9.7.

Where concept terms are available for both the source document and thetarget documents, query processing utilises a semantic concordancerather than a normal (lexical) concordance. Section 9.8.5 discussespossible strategies when the source document and/or the target documentslack semantic descriptions.

In practice, query processing may need to be delegated to a third partysearch engine such as Google, Yahoo!, etc. In that case the query mustbe generated so that it is compatible with the capabilities of thesearch engine. If the search engine accepts queries with optional terms,then context terms can be included in the query passed to the searchengine. The number of context terms may need to be restricted. This canbe done on the basis of structural proximity to the primary searchterms, and on relative weights.

If the search engine does not support optional search terms, then theprimary search terms are just sent to the search engine, and the contextterms are used to rank bias the search results. In this case the examplequery would be (P1 AND P2 AND . . . AND Pn).

It is also possibly to perform multiple sub-queries, each including adifferent combination of one or more of the context terms, and rankaggregate the results [see Kraft, R., C. C. Chang, F. Marghoul, and R.Kumar, “Searching with Context”, Proceedings of the 15th InternationalConference on World Wide Web, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2006, pp. 477-486,the contents of which is herein incorporated by reference].

In this case the sub-queries could include (P1 AND P2 AND . . . AND PnAND C0), (P1 AND P2 AND . . . Pn AND C1), etc.

9.8.5 Strategies in the Absence of Semantics

FIG. 92 illustrates the various strategies available when the sourcedocument and/or the target documents lack semantic descriptions.

As discussed in previous sections, semantic matching improves bothprecision and recall. Semantic matching is therefore preferred overlexical matching. Where either the source or target lacks semantic tags,it is useful to perform ad hoc semantic analysis to allow semanticmatching. Where semantic tags use different ontologies, ontologymatching can be used to normalise either set of tags. Where targetdocuments lack semantic tags, semantic analysis can be performed at thesame time as content indexing, and resulting subject descriptions can bestored separately from the target documents (or not stored at all) aswell as being incorporated in the semantic concordance.

Where there is a mismatch it is also possible to fall back on lexicalmatching. Even during lexical matching the use of context termssignificantly improves precision. Hybrid approaches are also possible,e.g. where a lexical query is generated from a semantic query byexpanding each concept into two or more synonymous keywords to improverecall, or where a concept-based subject description is expanded into akeyword-based description in the same way.

9.9 Contextual Ad Placement 9.9.1 Overview

Ads may be displayed alongside other content that may have been selectedexplicitly or discovered via document search.

The purpose of ad placement is to identify ads relevant to the user'sintent, to maximize value to the user and to the advertiser. This is avery similar problem to document search, and is addressed using asimilar contextual search mechanism.

Unlike a target document, an ad placement can specify arbitrary matchingcriteria by way of a general query expression. This allows ad placementcriteria to specify terms relating to the user (such as demographic orhistory), the environment (such as location or weather), as well asspecific document elements. The latter allows an advertiser to bid forad placements in response to user interactions in arbitrary regions of apublication.

During contextual ad placement the placement criteria 1185 of candidateads can become the target of a contextual search as described above.However, during ad placement, the normal query process may also usefullybe partially reversed, as shown in FIG. 93. Instead of generating aquery from the source context and processing it against a set of targetdocuments, we may instead process a number of ad placement criteriaagainst the source context. This allows the ad placement to bearbitrarily complex, and to be expressed via a normal query expression.

Ad placement processing proceeds by first identifying ad placements thatspecify subject terms that match the primary terms from the sourcecontext. Processing then continues by properly matching the placementcriteria of each candidate ad placement thus identified against theprimary terms, the source document context, and the user and environmentcontext.

Ads may also be selected and ranked according to other criteria, such astheir performance to date, and advertisers' overall andcampaign-specific budgets, and corresponding ad spending rate.

In addition to matching ads to the source context, they may also oralternatively be matched to the context provided by the content they areintended to be displayed alongside.

This latter approach may also be used when selecting ads to be includedin targeted or personalised editions or print publications.

9.10 Netpage Image Subject Markup

As described in previous sections, subject descriptions can be attachedto elements of a document to indicate the meaning of those elements.Subject markup can aid subsequent document discovery and can providecontext when searching for related information from a point in adocument.

Section 9.6.6 describes the case of how a page description for a printedphoto may contain interactivity markup to enable product discovery.Subject markup is now described in further detail with that illustrativecase, with reference to FIG. 95.

Subject markup may be performed before, during or after documentcreation. Reusable document elements such as articles or images areusefully marked up before being included in a particular document, sincesubject descriptions have value beyond one document. If subject markupis performed during or after document creation then it is most usefullyapplied to document elements usable beyond that one document.

When subject descriptions 1120 are used to facilitate search fromdocument content, e.g. to discover relevant ads to display alongsidelinked online content, then they may be specified as part of searchspecifications 1133. This allows them to be ignored during documentdiscovery.

A subject description 1120 may be attached to an arbitrary region (orzone) of a page defined via a region element 1103, either by beingattached to the region element directly or by being attached to a searchspecification 1133 attached to the region element.

A region element 1103, like a subject description 1120, can be createdbefore, during or after document creation. Although a region element isideal for specifying a region of an image, it may also be used forspecifying a region of text.

A region element 1103 can be created in a graphical editor by drawingthe outline of its region, e.g. by selecting, placing and scaling apre-defined shape such as a rectangle, by clicking to define each pointof a polygon, or by drawing a smooth curve using a stylus on a graphicstablet. A region element can also be created using a textual markuplanguage such as XML.

A subject description 1120 can be attached to a region element 1103 byspecifying keywords 1146 and/or concepts 1149 drawn from a lexicon 1152or ontology 1150 (including useful noun concepts such as people, placesand dates).

FIG. 95 shows a photo in an article, marked up with four illustrativesubject descriptions. In practice a photo could be marked up with manymore (and varied) subject descriptions.

Each subject description is associated with a region of the photo via aregion element. Region elements have a front-to-back ordering, so thehandbag region can be defined to be in front of the dress region, asillustrated in FIG. 94.

When a user interacts with a page of a document at a point in a regiondescribed by one or more region elements, the interaction may initiate acontent or ad search using the subject description attached to thoseregion elements, as described above.

The subject description at a given point is the union of the subjectdescriptions of the front-most regions containing the point at eachlevel in the group hierarchy. As illustrated in FIG. 94, the subjectdescriptions of the dress, handbag and shoes regions are never combined,but each subject description is combined with the subject description ofthe whole photo.

The subject description of the front-most region may be used as a sourceof primary search terms, while the subject descriptions of otherincluded regions may be used as a source of context terms. For example,if the user interacts with the handbag region, as illustrated in FIG.95, the handbag region can be used a source of primary search terms andthe whole photo region can be used as a source of context terms.

CONCLUSION

The present invention has been described with reference to a preferredembodiment and number of specific alternative embodiments. However, itwill be appreciated by those skilled in the relevant fields that anumber of other embodiments, differing from those specificallydescribed, will also fall within the spirit and scope of the presentinvention. Accordingly, it will be understood that the invention is notintended to be limited to the specific embodiments described in thepresent specification, including documents incorporated bycross-reference as appropriate. The scope of the invention is onlylimited by the attached claims.

1. A system for providing information to a user via a printed substrate,the system comprising: the printed substrate comprising user informationand coded data indicative of a region identity associated with thesubstrate and of a plurality of locations on the substrate; an opticallyimaging sensing device configured for: reading at least some of thecoded data when operatively positioned or moved relative to thesubstrate; and generating interaction data indicative of the regionidentity and at least one coordinate position of a sensing devicerelative to the substrate; and sending the interaction data to acomputer system; and a display device in communication with the computersystem, wherein the receipt of the interaction data by the computersystem causes the computer system to: identify and retrieve at leastpart of a page description corresponding to the printed substrate usingthe region identity; generate a query expression comprising one or moresearch terms, at least one of said search terms being identified usingthe page description and the at least one position of the sensingdevice; form a request using the query expression; and send the request,or a results resource including search results obtained using therequest, to the display device.
 2. The system of claim 1, wherein therequest is a request URI derived from the query expression.
 3. Thesystem of claim 2, wherein the display device comprises a web terminaland receipt of the request URI by the display device initiates retrievalof a corresponding resource via the internet.
 4. The system of claim 1,wherein the at least one search term is associated, in the pagedescription, with a zone of the substrate containing the position of thesensing device.
 5. The system of claim 4, wherein the at least onesearch term is a keyword extracted from text in the zone.
 6. The systemof claim 1, wherein at least one of said search terms identifies aconcept, a person, an organization, a place, a product, a publication, aweather condition, a geographic location, a date, a time of day, a dayof the week, a current user location, a user home location, a userdemographic indicator, a user preference, a search history, aclick-through history, a user interest or a user language.
 7. The systemof claim 1, wherein at least one of said search terms is derived from aresource description, a subject description, a user description or anenvironment description.
 8. The system of claim 1, wherein the queryexpression is generated by combining the search terms using operatorsselected from the group comprising: Boolean operators, proximityconstraint operators and occurrence constraint operators.
 9. The systemof claim 4, wherein the at least one search term is a primary searchterm and at least one of the other search terms of the query expressionis a context search term, said context search term being derived from aword, phrase, line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document orregion containing the zone.
 10. The system of claim 9, wherein saidcontext search term is contained in or associated with a word, phrase,line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document or regioncontaining the zone.
 11. The system of claim 9, wherein the searchresults all contain the primary search term, and are ranked according towhether they contain the context search term.
 12. The system of claim 5,wherein said keyword comprises a plurality associated words, saidplurality of associated words being identified from at least one word inthe zone.
 13. The system of claim 12, wherein the page descriptioncomprises a lexicon for identifying said plurality of associated wordsfrom the at least one word and at least one adjacent word.
 14. Thesystem of claim 9, wherein the at least one primary search term is akeyword and the at least one context search term is derived by at leastpartially determining a meaning of said keyword.
 15. The system of claim14, wherein the meaning is at least partially determined using a methodselected from the group comprising: identifying a part of speech forsaid keyword; identifying a supersense of said keyword; and identifyinga concept corresponding to said keyword in an ontology.
 16. The systemof claim 1, wherein the results resource is derived, at least partially,from the request using at least one of: a concordance; a semanticconcordance; a database of search terms associated with advertisements;and a search engine.
 17. The system of claim 1, wherein the substrate isselected from the group comprising: a printed document, a printed form,a page of a printed publication, a package for a product item, a labelfor a product item and a surface of a product item.
 18. The system ofclaim 1, wherein the display device comprises the sensing device. 19.The system of claim 1, wherein the display device is a mobile phone or apersonal digital assistant.
 20. A system for providing information to auser via a printed substrate, said substrate comprising user informationand coded data indicative of a region identity associated with thesubstrate and of a plurality of locations on the substrate, said systemcomprising: an optically imaging sensing device configured for: readingat least some of the coded data when operatively positioned or movedrelative to the substrate; and generating interaction data indicative ofthe region identity and at least one coordinate position of a sensingdevice relative to the substrate; and sending the interaction data to acomputer system; and a display device in communication with the computersystem, wherein the receipt of the interaction data by the computersystem causes the computer system to: identify and retrieve at leastpart of a page description corresponding to the printed substrate usingthe region identity; generate a query expression comprising one or moresearch terms, at least one of said search terms being identified usingthe page description and the at least one position of the sensingdevice; form a request using the query expression; and send the request,or a results resource including search results obtained using therequest, to the display device.